Myanmar’s team of fisheries experts who travelled to investigate Thailand’s industry.

MYANMAR aims to take a leaf out of Thailand’s book in its bid to earn EU certification for its fisheries exports.

Three Department of Fisheries (DOF) officials and nine members of the Myanmar Fishery Products Processors & Exporters Association (MPEA) made an inspection trip to Thailand from June 10-13 to oversee that country’s industry.

With the help of Thailand’s Department of Fisheries, the Myanmar mission investigated Pattana Frozen Foods, Unicord Public, the Talay Thai seafood market in Samut Sakhon Province and the Samut Prakarn jetty.

U Myo Nyunt, the managing director General Food Technology Industry and an executive committee member of the MPEA, said it should not be a difficult job for Myanmar to become EU-certified, it just needs a few changes to the existing system.

“On the side of hygiene and cleanliness, Thailand is excellent. Their landing sites smell like fish but don’t stink,” he said.

He added that Thailand’s documentation system, and how easy it was to follow, was something Myanmar could learn from.

Factory-wise, U Myo Nyunt said the Thai system has a strong mix of machinery and manpower, many of whom, he noted, are actually Myanmar.

“The daily production of those factories is about 60 tonnes and it is biased towards value-added foods,” he said, which is the opposite of Myanmar’s factories.

The fish markets were also demonstrably different, he said.

“Auctions at the Thai markets start at midnight, whereas ours start at 9am. By 6am the auctions are finished and the fish have already arrived at the factories by 6:30am.

“That helps control the temperature of the fish. We start our auctions at about 9am and finish at 3pm, which means it’s much harder to control the temperature,” he said.

The Myanmar delegation was also invited to look at the King Mongkut University of Technology in Thonburi, to bone up on ways to improve the technology used in Myanmar’s fisheries industry.

“At the university, students can specialise in seafood under the subject of Food Technology and we’re thinking about offering students some scholarships to this university. We’d also offer them employment later,” he said.

U Myo Nyunt added that education is one area where Myanmar must improve to increase the quality of its fisheries outputs.

“What we need is training. The MPEA is planning to give training on subjects such as quality control every three or six months and we aim to get every fisheries factory, or at least those keen to do the hard work, up to EU standard,” he said.