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Project Background
Asia is a major producer of tropical
fruit. In order to be a successful
food exporter of tropical fruit a
country must produce products that
are both sought after and be of acceptable
quality to consumers in other countries.
As importantly, those foods must comply
with the statutory requirements of
importing countries. Compliance with
the statutory, compulsory or mandatory
requirements of importing countries
is an unavoidable and essential prerequisite
to successful and profitable food
exporting. However, compliance is
becoming increasingly demanding because
of the preoccupation of the world
community with food quality, and more
especially with food safety quality
and associated health hazards. In
addition, an increasing number of
importing countries are demanding
adoption by exporting countries of
agreed inspection and examination
procedures, and prescribed food safety
systems as well as certification by
governments of exporting countries
that products are in compliance with
mandatory import requirements. The
procedures are becoming more and more
restrictive and that means that the
supply chain should be responsive
and flexible to handle the imposed
restrictions.
It is in the economic and national
interest of food exporting countries
to possess and maintain an international
commercial reputation as a reliable
supplier of product of acceptable
sensory and safety quality. To an
important degree, importing countries
judge the integrity of exporting countries
by the consistency of acceptable product
quality and the reliability of certification
attesting to its compliance with mandatory
import quality requirements. Detentions
and rejections of product result from
failures on these two counts.
Summarising reasons depicted for
the mismatch in production and sales
of the products are:
- weakly-defined quality control
system & certification
- weakly-defined marketing strategy
- non-optimal fruit processing systems
In order to strengthen the position
of Asian countries in the international
market place, sanitary requirements
of importing countries should be met,
efficiency should be increased and
production should be sustainable.
It should be kept in mind that the
Asian exporting countries of tropical
fruit are at a different level of
development and have different cultural
and political tresholds. Adaptation
of the tropical fruit producing chain
can therefore take a long time before
effectuation can take place. Another
vital issue is the lack of awareness
of the exportmarket, therefore demonstration
units are of primary importance for
building awareness of the supply chain,
export market and GMP/GHP processing.
Common strategies for enhancing tropical
fruit production and trade are to
increase productivity, to improve
quality, and to upgrade post harvest
handling.
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