The fishing industry wants to get Egyptian fish back on the menu in Europe: Most fishing and fish production facilities — including fish farms and fishing boats — have adopted a raft of regulations issued by the government in late 2022 to regulate seafood exports to the European Union, Hany El Menshawy, head of the fish industry division at the Federation of Egyptian Industries and chairman of seafood production company Summer Moon, told Enterprise.

ICYMI: The regulations set by the National Food Safety Authority (NFSA) lay the groundwork for the resumption of seafood exports to the EU, which the Customs Authority decided to preemptively suspend temporarily in 2021 over concerns that the bloc could remove Egypt from its approved exporters — as it did before — if it did not remedy concerns about safety standards and quality control.

A breakthrough may be just around the corner: EU committees will arrive in Egypt this month at the invitation of the NFSA to inspect a number of fishing and fish production facilities and verify compliance with EU quality standards, El Menshawy told us. El Menshawy added that he expects a number of factories to be approved soon and that the resumption of exports to Europe would be an important boost victory for the local fishing industry. EU-bound fishery products exports fell from EUR 24 mn in 2021 to virtually nil in 2022 after the export ban came into effect, EU data(pdf) shows.

THE GAME PLAN-

Operation: Restart EU fish exports: The rules designed to cater to EU export requirements require seafood export establishments and their suppliers to adhere to food safety standards and quality control procedures including:

  • Fishing vessels must be designed to prevent the disposal of sewage, smoke, fuel, oil, grease, or other substances that could contaminate seafood.
  • Surfaces in contact with seafood, including the equipment used to process it, must be corrosion-resistant and easy to clean.
  • Seafood must be protected from any sources of pollution or heat as soon as they are fished.
  • Seafood waste and products unfit for human consumption should be discarded in sealed containers made of suitable materials.
  • The water source on factory ships — i.e., fish processing vessels — must be located in a place where it is not at risk of being contaminated.

Changes on the ground: The sector is already shifting to the use of safe feed — fish food that is safe for the fish and humans later down the food chain — in fish farms, the NFSA’s inspections revealed, according to El Menshawy. Fishing boats have also ditched diesel for low-emission fuels and are no longer disposing waste in seas or lakes.

A good report card from the EU could also open up exports from our fish farms: While Egypt still technically has the thumbs up to export certain fish caught in the seas and inland bodies, the bloc is yet to give us approval to export fish produced in fish farms — known in the industry as aquaculture. Egypt applied for permission to export its farmed fish products to the bloc in 2021, but is yet to get the official go-ahead.

This would be a big win for the industry, because most Egyptian fish are bred in fish farms, which accounted for 78.4% of total production in 2021, followed by inland fisheries (16.5%), and marine fisheries (4.8%), according to the latest figures (pdf) released on fish production by state statistics agency Capmas.

WE’RE ALSO TAKING ACTION TO PROTECT FISH STOCKS-

The General Authority for Fish Resources Development (GAFRD) are trying to update the fishery law that has not been updated since the 1980s, according to a 2022 study by the head of the National Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries’ fisheries division Sahar Mehanna.

There’s not always plenty more fish in the sea: GAFRD has pushed for the halting of new fishing licenses being issued and promoted the adoption of more modern equipment to enable fishermen to fish further out to sea to enable overfished fish stocks closer to the coast to recover, Mehanna writes.

Net regulations for net results: The authority has also worked on regulating net sizes to reduce the amount of unwanted fish that trawlers and fishermen take out of the sea.

Temporary fishing bans to let stocks recover: GAFRD has also pushed for closed seasons “to protect the spawning areas and conserve young fishes” and let depleted fish stocks recuperate, Mehanna writes.

Sound familiar? Authorities banned fishing in the Red Sea for a seven-month period to “preserve the bio equilibrium,” General Authority for Fish Resources Development head Ayman Ammar told local media at the time.

Artificially topping up the seas: The country has also been tackling the effects of overfishing by “encouraging the establishment of marine hatcheries to provide the seed necessary to preserve the natural fish stocks found in the seas,” according to Mehanna.

THE FISHING INDUSTRY IN NUMBERS-

Natural fish stocks are on the slide: The amount of fish caught along the country’s Mediterranean coast alone declined nearly 50% between 2011 and 2019, environmental researcher Myriam Khalfallah said in a 2023 study assessing the impact of overfishing and climate change on Mediterranean fisheries in Egypt. “Stock assessments of commercially important species … attribute the decline to overexploitation. Even some of the newly established invasive species appear to be overfished,” Khalfallah said.

Inland fisheries are being eroded, too: Most of the country’s lakes — including Manzala, Burullus, Port Fouad, Timsah, Edku, and Mariout — have been reduced to less than half of their original sizes as a result of degradation, drought, and land reclamation for housing, according to Mehanna’s study. Some of these lakes “act as the nursery and sometimes the spawning grounds of several commercially important species inhabiting the Mediterranean,” Mehanna notes. On top of this, raw sewage, agricultural runoff, industrial waste, and weed control measures all contribute to water contamination in inland fisheries, reducing fish populations and how safe they are for human consumption.

But despite all this, local fish production is on the up: Egypt produced some 3.5 mn tons of fish in 2023, according to El Menshawy. That’s 75% more than the 2 mn tons we produced in 2021 — at a value of EGP 66.4 bn — according to Capmas’ most recent statistics. Per capita fish consumption currently stands at about 23 kgs annually, which is slightly higher than the global average of 21.5 kgs, Lakes and Fish Resources Protection and Development Agency head Salah Moselhy told Enterprise.

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