China will actively promote the healthy, safe and environmentally-friendly shrimp farming methods to ensure the sustainable development of the sector, said a high-ranking official from the Ministry of Agriculture on Monday.
  
Liu Zheng, deputy director of the fishery administration under the ministry, said at  a seminar that shrimp has been a major aquaculture for more than 20 years and played an important role in China's aquatic export.
  
Statistics from the ministry shows that from 1996, the country's shrimp culture has experienced a recovery after 1993's outbreak of shrimp-related disease. In 2003, the country yielded 780,000 tons of artificially-bred shrimp, and exported 119,000 tons of shrimp.
  
Meanwhile, there is no report of trade dispute on quality problems so far this year in shrimp export. The European Commission also lifted export ban of aquatic products from China on October 18 this year.
 
Liu admitted that there are still some problems still lagging the sector, citing the unbalanced development between different areas, frequent occurrence of some diseases in some aquaculture farms, and low quality of shrimp fries.
  
Liu noted that the country is now taking measures to strengthen quality control and technical training to ensure a healthy development of shrimp sector.
  
The two-day seminar opened here Monday was jointly sponsored by the ministry, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and the Network of Aquaculture Centers in the Asia-Pacific.

(Xinhua News Agency November 16, 2004)