(KUALA LUMPUR) - Malaysia's frozen seafood industry Wednesday urged the European Union to delay an imminent ban on its multi-billion-dollar exports, which do not meet European health standards.

The EU is expected to impose a ban on June 18, dealing a major blow to the seafood firms as their top export destinations include France, Britain, Belgium, Italy and Spain.

"A ban will be devastating for us as Europe is one of our major markets and it would result in many of us going out of business," Ch'ng Chin Hooi, chairman of the Malaysian Frozen Foods Processors Association, told AFP.

"What we want is for the EU to increase the grace period for companies and fishermen here to meet the higher health standard," he said.

The ban comes after EU food and veterinary officials visited Malaysia in April 2007. They found that six out of nine local seafood companies exporting to Europe did not meet EU health standards.

Ch'ng said Malaysian authorities should come down hard on industry players who fail to adhere to food safety regulations.

"We want the government to better coordinate and enforce proper health and safety rules among those who flout the regulations so that the whole industry will not suffer because of a few bad apples," he said.

Ch'ng said Malaysian food operators have supplied frozen seafood to European markets for the last 30 years and had never faced a ban.

"Malaysia has not faced any ban and it shows our commitment to provide high quality exports," he said.

Ch'ng said that most of his association's 20 food processing members have adopted EU standards and that they were planning to get European importers to help lobby against the ban.

But he admitted that there were "some fishing vessels, landing ports and aquaculture ponds that did not meet EU standards."

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