Philippines believes that its aquaculture industry should be eco-friendly for long-term viability. The country is ready to do whatever it takes to accomplish this, said the Philippine’s Agriculture Secretary Luis Lorenzo Jr. while speaking at the 2nd National Shrimp Congress. Citing an instance, Lorenzo said that the culture of exotic shrimp like Litopenaeus vannamei in local ponds may cause serious disease outbreaks and hence the government seeks to promote the culture of black tiger prawn, which is more familiar to the farmers of the country. The DA chief said while the white shrimp is getting more accepted among local growers aside from the black tiger prawn, the government will continue to ban its commercial propagation because it almost

always carry some dreaded shrimp disease in it. "As we have learned from our past debacles, the key to success of our industry is going back to the basics of sustainable and environment-friendly shrimp farming," he said. The DA chief pointed that the government set up 15 molecular diagnostic laboratories nationwide for early detection of disease carriers and also introduced 'green water technology' to combat diseases threatened the shrimp farming in late nineties. Lorenzo stressed the need of introducing eco labelling as the country needs to tune its production and export strategies to the changing preferences of the world market to enable the local industry to remain globally competitive. Shrimps and prawns are the country's second biggest fishery export next to tuna and Philippines remains among the top ten producers along with Vietnam, Bangladesh, India, Ecuador, Mexico and Brazil.