Pacific Shelf — Issue 008

Halal scope clarified — seafood, dried fruit and beeswax-coated produce confirmed in, fresh fruit and beverages out

BPJPH Decree No. 307/2025 sets out which categories fall under the mandatory halal regime taking full effect on 17 October. Fresh, unprocessed fruit and beverage products are exempt. Processed products are not — and the decree resolves earlier ambiguity by naming seafood, dried fruit and vegetables, and products where beeswax is applied to fresh produce as requiring certification. Animal products have been in scope since 1989; the new text closes the gaps around the edges.

For Australian exporters the operative reading is narrow and specific: dried fruit and dried vegetable lines that some had treated as "fresh" and therefore exempt are now explicitly captured, as is seafood. If either sits in your Indonesian catalogue, it needs a certificate in the pipeline now.

Source: BPJPH Decree No. 307/2025, enacted 20 November 2025, notified to WTO 6 May 2026. Enforcement aligned to the 17 October 2026 mandatory deadline. Full category schedule to be confirmed against the decree text — VERIFY against primary instrument before relying on any single-line exemption.

Draft QCVN 8-1:2026/BYT rewrites the national mycotoxin ceiling — comment window open

Vietnam has notified a draft national technical regulation (G/TBT/N/VNM/433) setting revised maximum limits for mycotoxin contamination in food. It replaces QCVN 8-1:2011/BYT, the standard that has governed since 2011, and covers six mycotoxin groups: aflatoxin, ochratoxin A, patulin, deoxynivalenol, zearalenone and fumonisin. Comment period closes 12 September 2026. See the deep dive below.

Source: G/TBT/N/VNM/433, "Draft Circular Promulgating the National Technical Regulation QCVN 8-1:2026/BYT on the limits of mycotoxin contamination in food." Comment period close 12 September 2026. Entry-into-force date not stated in the notification — VERIFY against the final circular.

DLD suspends import and transit of Chinese cloven-hoofed animals and carcasses over SAT1 foot-and-mouth

The Department of Livestock Development has issued an order (notified as G/SPS/N/THA/809/Rev.1) suspending the importation and transit of certain Artiodactyla — cloven-hoofed animals, including cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats and pigs — and their carcasses from China, following a WOAH-reported outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease serotype SAT1. The order replaces and repeals the previous DLD order on the same subject.

No direct Australian compliance action: the measure is China-origin specific. It matters as context — SAT1 is the strain that has been moving through mainland China and Central Asia through 2026, and Thailand's DLD is now in active border-defence posture. Exporters of animal products into Thailand should expect heightened documentation scrutiny across the board while that posture holds.

Source: G/SPS/N/THA/809/Rev.1, DLD order on temporary suspension of importation and transit of certain Artiodactyla and their carcasses from China. Origin-specific (China). No approved-country changes for Australia notified.

Draft biosecurity report proposes market access for decrowned pineapples from India and Indonesia

DAFF has released a draft report proposing that fresh decrowned pineapples (Ananas comosus) from India and Indonesia be permitted into Australia subject to biosecurity import requirements (G/SPS/N/AUS/638). India and Indonesia are assessed together as a single import risk analysis on a shared pest profile. Comment period closes 14 September 2026.

Inbound rather than outbound, so no action for exporters shipping north — logged for corridor awareness, as it signals warming AU–Indonesia horticultural access and a live consultation an Indonesian-facing reader may want to be across.

Source: G/SPS/N/AUS/638, "Decrowned pineapples from India and Indonesia: biosecurity import requirements draft report." Comment period close 14 September 2026.

What changed. Vietnam has put out for comment a full replacement of QCVN 8-1, its national mycotoxin standard, unchanged in substance since 2011. The draft, QCVN 8-1:2026/BYT, resets maximum limits across six mycotoxin families — aflatoxin, ochratoxin A, patulin, deoxynivalenol, zearalenone and fumonisin — and restates the management and testing requirements that attach to them. The comment window runs to 12 September 2026.

Why it reaches Australian exporters. Mycotoxin ceilings are not a niche concern. They bind the products Australia is strongest in selling into Vietnam: tree nuts and peanuts (aflatoxin), cereals and grain-based products (deoxynivalenol, zearalenone, fumonisin), dried fruit and dried vine fruit (ochratoxin A), spices, coffee, and dairy where aflatoxin M1 carries through from feed. A tightened limit does not announce itself at the border as a rule change — it announces itself as a rejected consignment. The exporters who get caught are the ones testing to the old 2011 ceiling when the shipment is assessed against the new one.

The trap to avoid. This is a draft. It is not operative, and the entry-into-force date is not stated in the notification. Reading it as a live requirement would be the same error class that has bitten this corridor before. But reading it as "not my problem yet" is the opposite failure. The correct posture is to obtain the draft limit tables now, compare them line-by-line against current testing certificates, and identify which product lines would fail if the draft passed unchanged. That is planning work, and the comment window is the moment to do it — including the option of lodging comment if a proposed limit is out of step with Codex or with what your product can realistically meet.

The wider read. Vietnam's rewrite does not sit alone. Thailand's MRL consolidation — a standing tracker in this publication — is the same movement in a different contaminant class: pesticide residues rather than fungal toxins, but the same underlying shift toward tighter, better-enforced chemical ceilings across the region's food-safety regimes. Two of the six markets are now actively resetting contaminant limits within a single quarter. The corridor-level signal is that "we've always passed before" is decaying as a compliance strategy. The margin between an Australian product's actual contaminant load and the legal ceiling is being squeezed from both ends — by tightening limits and by improving detection.

The point: Vietnam's mycotoxin ceiling is being rewritten for the first time in fifteen years, it lands on the core of what Australia exports, and the comment window closing 12 September is the window to find out whether your product clears the new line — before a shipment does it for you.

Pacific Shelf · pacificshelf.net · Regulatory intelligence, not legal or compliance advice. Every item traced to its primary instrument; verify against the cited document before acting.Summary Here REGULATORY ITEMS