The subdelegate of the Government in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Javier Plata, has today inaugurated the presentation of the brochure where the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) establishes international standards of commercial quality of bananas and bananas. The event took place in the Subdelegation of the Government in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and was organized by the Territorial Trade Directorate with the cooperation of the Association of Banana Producers Organizations of the Canary Islands (ASPROCAN).
Javier Plata, deputy delegate of the Government in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, was in charge of the opening of the event and was really satisfied with the position that has been granted to the Banana de Canarias: “This brochure puts value on the quality of the work of Canarian farmers and also of our land for the cultivation of bananas.”
“It is important that all the member countries of the OECD can appreciate the quality of our production, to place the Canarian Banana as a reference in international trade,” added Javier Plata.
In addition to the deputy delegate of the Government, Agustín Velilla Sanz, deputy director of Inspection, Certification and Technical Assistance of Foreign Trade, along with technical advisor Paula de la Cruz, both of the Secretary of State for Trade, as well as Domingo Martín Ortega, president of ASPROCAN and Esther Domínguez Palarea, responsible for the technical department of ASPROCAN, participated in the event.
The purpose of this brochure is to facilitate, in an illustrative way, the interpretation of quality standards both by the official Inspection Services of the different countries, and by commercial agents: exporters, importers, customers, and all those involved in the supply chain of this precious product. Therefore, this brochure is considered a reference instrument that will allow to resolve discrepancies between the commercial partners, in the marketing of the fruit.
In this sense, the elaboration of this document by the sector is of great importance since it has placed the banana of the Canary Islands as a reference of quality, and has made visible, at an international level, the peculiarities of the banana of the islands, clarifying quality characteristics that affect the banana and for which the interpretation of the norm may not be clear to all actors in the chain.
An example of this can be the acceptance, from the knowledge of the product, of the possibility of categorizing as “extra” a banana with the presence of latex on its surface, when sometimes the presence of latex had been considered “foreign matter”, so that it was considered that the banana that presented it did not meet the minimum requirements for its marketing. Another element has been the differentiation of coloration, characteristic of sunny bananas with respect to mature bananas, allowing their commercialization, although they present this characteristic.
This brochure, which presents these international standards of commercial banana quality, has been prepared with the collaboration of the Subdirectorate of Inspection, Certification and Technical Assistance of Foreign Trade, belonging to the Secretary of State for Trade of the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade.