It submitted “a few pages” of documents to the House’s fact-finding sub-panel yesterday to clarify the company’s involvement amid growing public doubts about the purposes of the company’s fish research in the first place
Premsak Wanatsunthorn, Deputy Managing Director of Fish Research and Breeding for CP Foods (CPF), was invited by the research and innovation sub-panel of the House to explain the role of the company in the spread of the invasive blackchin tilapia fish, but he failed to show up in the meeting yesterday, citing that he was tied up in other work schedules.
According to the chair of the sub-panel, Dr. Wayo Asavaroongruang of Move Forward Party, this is the second time that the company’s executive has failed to show up to explain the company’s role before the sub-panel.
Based on the two documents submitted, four pages in total, the company said that it did import 2,000 juvenile Blackchin tilapia fish (Sarotherodon melanotheron) from Ghana on December 22, 2010. That took 35 hours for the fish to be transported from the country to Thailand, and the company’s staff learned upon their arrival at the airport that a number of them had died as a result. Only 600 survived in a foam box, it claimed.
The company claimed that it then decided to release the rest of the fish in a cement based nursery pond in the company’s farm (Yisan in Amphawa district, Samut Songkram), but the fish died consecutively; from 600 on the first day in the cement pond, the number of fish reduced to 400 two days later, and then 200 by the end of the first week. By the second week, there were only 150 of them left. As there were not enough healthy samples any more, the company claimed it consulted with the Fisheries Department’s official supervising its fish importing and collected and preserved 50 fish in formalin in two jars to submit them to the department as recommended.
By the end of the third week, there were only 50 of them left. So, the company decided “not to start” its research and abandoned the plan. The last batch of the fish was cleaned in Chlorine before being preserved in formalin for 24 hours and buried with lime at the site on January 7, 2011, the company claimed.
It’s 16 days in total that it had possessed the fish, the company noted, adding its fish disposal just followed the department’s instructions. And one day before the fish disposal, on January 6, the company claimed that it handed over the two jars of the preserved fish to the department’s officials at the department. No requests were made to its staff to submit any records, prompting it to believe that the fish hand-over was complete, the company further claimed.
In 2017 or seven years later, on August 1, the department sent its officials to examine the farm following the probe into the spread of the fish in Samut Songkram province by the National Human Rights Commission. The company claimed that the officials didn’t find any blackchin fish in the nursery and breeding ponds. They just found some of them in the reservoir named R2, which connected to natural canals, not the ponds.
“Because the reservior connected to the natural water sources, the fish from those sources could be found in it. It’s not surprising that they were the same fish because they were from the same sources,” the company noted, adding that by trying to probe whether they were the fish from the same source (the company’s ponds) is like an assumption that already foresaw the answer as they were from the same natural sources, apparently suggesting that the fish rather swam into the company’s reservior.
“The company has never conducted any research on the fish or bred it since the incidents in 2011. The company is confident that we are not the cause of the spread, but we are not complacent and ready to cooperate with the state agencies concerned to mitigate the impacts,” said the company, adding so far five programs have been launched by the company in order to work with the responsible state agencies including the fish purchases at 15 baht per kilogram, the biological control program by fish preyers, support of fish catches, and long-term studies on fish processing and fish controls.
“Questionable” facts
The sub-panel, was not completely convinced, however. Its members comprising scientists and experts from various fields questioned the company’s involvement and actions since the beginning. The sub-panel requested the company to show proof of the fish import documents as well as its research detailing objectives and methodologies. So far, nobody is clear about what the company’s research was all about as the company failed to send in its import request forms and the research proposal, which contain all details about the research. The Fisheries Department has not submitted the same documents as requested either, according to the chair.
The sub-panel also requested for proof of the fish evidence and related reports submitted to the department as claimed by the company.
Under the conditions imposed to accompany its import of the fish, which was approved by the biosafety committee (IBC) on April 23, 2010, or around eight months before the fish were imported, the company was tasked to collect and submit fish fin samples from alive fish, the company must submit its report on research results upon completion of its research, it should have biosafety measures introduced at the fish nursery site, and if the research was scrapped, the fish must be destroyed and samples of their carcasses must be submitted to the department for examination.
The company claimed to have submitted those two jars without records, which are now reported to have disappeared. None of the fish’s fin samples is confirmed to exist as both the company and the department have denied submission and reception against each other. No confirmation on the submission of the fish carcasses of the last batch has been made, in addition.
According to the sub-panel’s members who gave interviews to the press, the DNAs collected from the fish caught from the clarifier in 2017 were close to those caught in natural water sources, where the fish have spread. The sub-panel needs information concerning the DNAs of the fish since the beginning to establish their connections. It critically questioned what happened after some fish were found in the clarifier in 2017. No information after the incident was available at all, it noted.
The sub-panel said it would try calling for related documents or calling in concerned figures again in order to find more details about the incidents concerned. Among those is the department’s Director General, whose name appeared in the department’s notification letter on fish import approval issued in 2008, one of the two documents submitted to the sub-panel by the company. At that time, he was the department’s legal official, suggesting that he knew everything in the first place.
The fish have now spread into water sources in 17 provinces in the East and the South. Because of their aggressive behaviour, they hunt native aquatic species and breed fast in water sources, damaging natural aquatic ecosystems and aquaculture in several places. The government is trying to fix the problem by encouraging intensive fish catching and consumption nationwide. It is working on putting the issue on a national agenda in order to draw more extensive state efforts to address the problem.
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