The Thai Chamber of Commerce will call on the government to make compliance with the government’s Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) scheme mandatory for Thai farmers as a building block to overcoming the residue and pest issues currently affecting exports to the EU and other markets.
The EU threatened to ban imports of certain Thai vegetables last December following persistent findings of pests and excessive chemical residues. The potential ban affected fifteen vegetable lines across five groups. Many of them were key items for the region’s restaurant trade, such as basil, chillies, capsicums, eggplants, bitter gourds and parsley.
Thailand’s agriculture ministry initially responded in January with a proposal to suspend all exports of the five groups of vegetables from 1 February to pre-empt a formal EU ban and to buy time to work on fixing the problems domestically. Such a move would have prevented any further exports of the given products until the ministry of agriculture was satisfied with the implementation of sanitary and phytosanitary control measures in Thailand.
But the Thai Chamber of Commerce rejected the plan and persuaded the agriculture ministry to revise its proposal to the EU from a “self-imposed ban” to one focused on “self-imposed controls” on exports to ensure that they would meet the sanitary and phytosanitary standards (SPS) of the EU and other export markets. That has allowed companies to continue exporting the items, albeit subject to 100 per cent compliance with the relevant SPS.
According to Chusak Chuenprayoth, vice-chairman of the Food and Agriculture Committee of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, the Thai trade ministry has put forward the proposed “self-imposed controls” to its counterparts in the EU and is currently awaiting comment.
The Chamber is now going to propose that the agriculture ministry pursues compulsory implementation of Good Agricultural Practices for Thai farmers as a plank of those self-imposed controls.
The Thai government’s GAP standard is more basic and less rigorous than the private ThaiGAP scheme, which has been benchmarked to GlobalGAP standards. While the government established its GAP system several years ago to comply with export regulations, it has not been strictly implemented and thus has failed to engineer any improvement in food safety and quality assurance standards.
However, the Thai Chamber of Commerce recognises that securing ThaiGAP certification remains beyond the means and methods of most farmers right now, and believes that a properly executed GAP scheme could provide an important baseline standard and platform to meeting export market requirements.
“If we tried to make ThaiGAP compulsory, it’d be very difficult due to the lack of basic knowledge among farmers,” Mr Chuenprayoth told Fruitnet.com. “We want the Thai government to understand and implement the first basic step by making their GAP standard compulsory and ensuring it is properly controlled and monitored by government officers. Otherwise, food safety standards cannot be established in our country.”
According to local newspaper the Bangkok Post, the Chamber will discuss the proposal with the agriculture ministry with the aim of implementing compulsory GAP certification within a month.
Pathom Taenham, president of the Thai Fruit & Vegetable Producers Association, told the newspaper that tighter inspection procedures for exports to the EU were already having an impact on trade volumes. He predicted that the value of fruit and vegetable exports to the EU would decline to around Bt4-4.5bn in 2011 from Bt7bn last year as a result.
The Thai Chamber of Commerce set up the ThaiGAP system four years ago and completed the benchmarking process with GlobalGAP in order to address the shortfalls of the government’s GAP system. And Mr Chuenprayoth said it would continue to promote ThaiGAP as a voluntary standard for export-focused growers.
“ThaiGAP had to be created as a support tool to farmers who wanted to export their product to comply with international food safety standards and to develop trust and confidence among consumers in Thai fresh produce,” said Mr Chuenprayoth. “It also ensured compliance with the SPS standards. In the case of farmers who are under contract to exporters and want to upgrade their standards to ThaiGAP or GlobalGAP, they can do this as a voluntary step.”
Many of Thailand’s professional export companies were also opposed to the government’s previously proposed self-imposed ban on exports because they felt it was too indiscriminate. They argued that it unfairly penalised exporters who were already complying with export standards because of the failure of other shippers to meet market requirements. The Thai Chamber of Commerce has accordingly asked the agriculture ministry to create a list of established and reliable exporters for issue to the EU.
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