Mission Report Mauritania: Consultancy on Implementation of a Shellfish Quality monitoring Programme

Mauritania has several commercially interesting shellfish species, such as Venus verrucosa, Venus rosalina and Venerupis dura , in her coastal waters. In order to comply with the European standards and to export these shellfish to the European market a shellfish monitoring programme for parameters such as marine phycotoxins, toxic phytoplankton, metals, Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH), metals, physical parameters, and microbiology should be set up. Therefore a mission to Mauritania took place in order to evaluate the needs and make an inventory of the lacking items with respect to a monitoring programme. IMROP (Institut Mauritanien des Recherches Océanographiques et de Pêche), DVIS (Département de Valorisation et Inspection Sanitaire) was visited for these purposes. In order to set up an adequate monitoring system legislation should be written, a monitoring programme should be designed, an Internal Quality system should be set up, and various analyses should be implemented. The implementation of these requires the input of expert knowledge and training possibilities. The needs for a successful implementation of a monitoring programme are therefore depicted in the report.