style="text-transform: uppercase;">Sandakan: State Director of Veterinary Service Department, Dr Peter Lee urged every operator in the State to register their swiftlet houses. He said although some 4,000 of swiftlet houses exist in the State, only 1,532 have been legally registered with the Department of Veterinary Services

"From the total of registered swiftlet houses, only 353 have successfully obtained the MyGAP certification.

"Therefore, I recommend that every swiftlet houses operators to get the certification of Malaysian Good Agricultural Practice (MyGAP) to ensure their swiftlet production is free from disease, guaranteed quality and safe to eat," he said.

Peter also said the Sabah Veterinary Services Department (JPV) is always ready to provide guidelines and advice for swiftlet nest entrepreneurs or forms to obtain certification, recognition and accreditation to export swiftlet nest products.

"The Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for swiftlet nest products export to overseas have been provided by Sabah Veterinary Service Department for a long time.

" The SOP is very easy and extremely practical where exporters only need to obtain export permits from Sabah Wildlife Department and export permit and Health Certificate Veterinary from Sabah Veterinary Service Department,"he said, adding exporters only need less than one week to get confirmation if the documents are complete.

For the record, on Sept 09, 2012, China and Malaysia signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) of a special procedure, namely "Protocol of Screening, Quarantine and Hygienic Requirements for the Import of Nest-Bird Grain Products from Malaysia to China.

Through this new protocol, all exporters of swiftlet nest products to China should comply with "Standard Operation Procedures (SOPs), Rules and Regulation of Raw Cleaned Edible Birds Nest (EBN)For Export to the People's Republic of China.

This new SOP stipulates that only clean raw EBN is allowed to export to China via Swiflet Nest Refinery which has been certified by Good Veterinary Hygienic Practices (GVHP), Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), Hazzard Analitical Critical Control Point (HACCP) dan Veterinary Health Mark (VHM).

"At present, only one swiftlet Raw Clean Processing Factory in Sabah has obtained GVHP certificates and export swiftlet nest to China legally.

Peter said the Department will continue to provide guidance and support to companies who currently in the process of applying for GVHP certification. - Winnie Kasmir