AQUACULTURE REGULATION IN BRAZIL - BENEFITS AND CONSTRAINTS FROM PRODUCTION TO MARKETING

Aquaculture has been highly promoted in Brazil since early 2000's. The establishment of the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture in 2009, enabled expanding the sector-oriented resources, leading to a gradual annual increase that has improved the society's perception about its relevance, both regarding job generation and the social development programmes. Nowadays, Brazil is among the 15 largest producers of farmed fish in the world. In 2014, there were 585,000 tons. This year will be more than 600,000 and the forecast is to exceed 1.2 million tons in ten years. The activity moves around US$1,5 billion a year and generates at least 1 million jobs. Besides this performance, the regulatory backbone is still constraining the activity to reach its potential. From farming to consumption, regulations are extremely complex and not always clear or affordable. In general, processes involve different departments of several institutions that are not always tuned.  Beside other licenses, the water grant at public reservoirs for aquaculture propose, which is thought as one of the biggest opportunity to boom aquaculture in Brazil, for example, can take years. The Brazilian National Environmental Policy Law includes a legal definition of the environment that attempt to protect the environment as a whole and is considered a holistic and complete law. However, in practice, environmental licence has been one of the protracted licenses to get for every aquaculture initiative, being considered one of the main bottlenecks restraining the activity in Brazil. Sanitary inspection is mandatory to trade fish but the absence of fish warehouse and the difficulty to stablish simplest facilities projects for small scale farms, lead both producers and traders to an illegal status, once most of them keep working without having all these permission achieved. Also, to protect their own farmers, some Brazilian states have been strengthening their border surveillance against the entrance of production from other states without its complete set of license, what is becoming a market barrier among states, once the same rigor has not being applied to their own production. This paper highlights how regulation can benefit or constrain aquaculture in Brazil and emphasize the effort Brazilian aquaculture stakeholders have been making to accomplish the mandatory regulation.