Abstract
Globally, Bangladesh is the 5th largest aquaculture producer but the seafood export trade
ranked feculences. The export oriented pangasius and tilapia is the major farmed fish in
Bangladesh but international export trade is intangible due to absence of implementation of
standard aquaculture certification. The largest Asian seafood exporters such as China,
Vietnam, and Indonesia have established aquaculture certification by meeting international
third-party certifier guidelines. The study was conducted based on multiple methodological
approaches including literature review, secondary data analysis, primary data collection
and analysis, and laboratory analysis of fish, fish feed, water, and sludge samples. Since,
aquaculture certification is based on international standards and complies with relevant
local, national and international laws and regulations therefore, Bangladesh has developeр
some rules and guidelines on aquaculture governance sporadically such as fish feed and
hatchery rules, food hygiene, sanitation, etc. to comply with the international code of
conducts for export. On the other hand, a number of guidelines of aquaculture governance
such as responsible use of drugs and chemicals rules, disease control strategy, etc. cannot be
established and enforced at field level properly. Besides, the pangasius and tilapia
aquaculture systems in Bangladesh is polyculture with carps that play major role being
showed by PCA (Principal Component Analysis) modeling unlike in Vietnam and China
because they practice monoculture. The socio-economic characteristics of farmers in
Bangladesh are mostly complementary to adopt aquaculture certification but some of them
are constraints to adopt certification particularly because a large number of farms are small
in size having difficulty to comply with certification code of conducts. The majority of the
farmers was of middle age, educated and experienced which are technically efficient to
adopt aquaculture certification. However, the matter of regret is that the code of conducts
of top international third party certifier (e.g. ASC and GlobalGAP) are not followed or very
seldom emulated by pangasius and tilapia farmers in Bangladesh such as site selection and
management, reproduction system at hatchery, responsible drugs and chemicals use, water
usage and disposal system, occupational health and safety, fish welfare and management,
harvesting, handling and transportation system, sampling and testing, feed use and
management, pest control, environmental and biodiversity management, post-harvest
operations and traceability and social and welfare criteria. Regarding food safety issues, the
produced fish was found contaminated by heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, mercury
and chromium being originated from fish feed. Though late but time has come to fathom
and take necessary steps by the government agencies about export issues of valuable finfish
produced in Bangladesh. Otherwise, as a large producer, the growing aquaculture industry
of Bangladesh is likely to be declined in terms of domestic production and export.