Scope
The Fisheries (Products) Regulations 2023 apply to fishery and aquaculture products under Guyana’s Fisheries Act. Schedule Four applies to official control of environmental and other contaminants in fishery and aquaculture products, including lead, cadmium, mercury, dioxins and dioxin-like PCBs, and benzo(a)pyrene.
HMI records the Schedule Four, Part I, Table 1 heavy-metal rows for fish muscle meat, crustaceans, bivalve molluscs, and cephalopods. Dioxins, dioxin-like PCBs, benzo(a)pyrene, microbiological criteria, veterinary-drug residues, pesticides, additives, process-water controls, and HACCP provisions are outside the regulatory metal-limit register for this ingest.
Exact limit and units
Schedule Four Table 1 contains two heavy-metal sub-tables. The first uses ppm, equivalent to mg/kg; HMI converts those values to ug/kg by multiplying by 1000. The second uses ppb; HMI records those values directly as ug/kg. The source states that batches or production lots exceeding the Table 1 or Table 2 maximum limits are unfit for human consumption and must not be placed on the market or must be withdrawn from the market.
| Source table | Species | Matrix | Limit | Source unit | Structured value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Table 1 ppm | Pb | Muscle meat of all fish except where otherwise indicated | 0.3 | ppm | 300 ug/kg |
| Table 1 ppm | Cd | Muscle meat of all fish except where otherwise indicated | 0.05 | ppm | 50 ug/kg |
| Table 1 ppm | tHg | Muscle meat of all fish except where otherwise indicated | 0.5 | ppm | 500 ug/kg |
| Table 1 ppm | Cd | Little tuna, marlin, plain bonito, rays, and tunas | 0.1 | ppm | 100 ug/kg |
| Table 1 ppm | tHg | Little tuna, marlin, plain bonito, rays, and tunas | 1.0 | ppm | 1000 ug/kg |
| Table 1 ppm | tHg | Kingfish, mullets, sailfish, shark and dogfish, and snake mackerel | 1.0 | ppm | 1000 ug/kg |
| Table 1 ppm | Cd | Bullet tuna | 0.2 | ppm | 200 ug/kg |
| Table 1 ppm | Cd | Swordfish | 0.3 | ppm | 300 ug/kg |
| Table 1 ppm | tHg | Swordfish | 1.0 | ppm | 1000 ug/kg |
| Table 1 ppm | Pb | Crustaceans, excluding brown meat of crabs and thorax meat of Palinuridae lobsters | 0.5 | ppm | 500 ug/kg |
| Table 1 ppm | Cd | Crustaceans, excluding brown meat of crabs and thorax meat of Palinuridae lobsters | 0.5 | ppm | 500 ug/kg |
| Table 1 ppm | tHg | Crustaceans, excluding brown meat of crabs and thorax meat of Palinuridae lobsters | 0.5 | ppm | 500 ug/kg |
| Table 1 ppm | Pb | Bivalve molluscs | 1.5 | ppm | 1500 ug/kg |
| Table 1 ppm | Cd | Bivalve molluscs | 1.0 | ppm | 1000 ug/kg |
| Table 1 ppm | tHg | Bivalve molluscs | 0.5 | ppm | 500 ug/kg |
| Table 1 ppm | Pb | Cephalopods without viscera | 1.0 | ppm | 1000 ug/kg |
| Table 1 ppm | Cd | Cephalopods without viscera | 1.0 | ppm | 1000 ug/kg |
| Table 1 ppm | tHg | Cephalopods without viscera | 0.5 | ppm | 500 ug/kg |
| Table 1 ppb | tAs | Muscle meat of all fish, crustaceans, and molluscs | 200 | ppb | 200 ug/kg |
| Table 1 ppb | Pb | Muscle meat of all fish, crustaceans, and molluscs | 25 | ppb | 25 ug/kg |
| Table 1 ppb | Cd | Muscle meat of all fish, crustaceans, and molluscs | 10 | ppb | 10 ug/kg |
| Table 1 ppb | tHg | Muscle meat of all fish, crustaceans, and molluscs | 200 | ppb | 200 ug/kg |
The source says mercury rather than methylmercury, so HMI records those rows as tHg. The generic ppb arsenic row says arsenic without inorganic-arsenic speciation, so HMI records it as tAs.
How tested
Regulation 18 identifies atomic absorption spectroscopy, UPLC, UHPLC-MS/MS, LC-MS/MS, or another scientifically proven method for heavy metals such as cadmium, lead, mercury, and arsenic. Schedule Four sets sampling and sample-preparation rules for official control of lead, cadmium, and mercury, including incremental samples, aggregate samples, laboratory samples, and specific fish sampling procedures for different fish sizes.
Schedule Four Part IV requires sample preparation and analytical methods for lead, cadmium, and mercury to comply with the criteria in the schedule. It says official-control methods must be reliable and scientifically recognized, and it lists performance criteria for lead, cadmium, mercury, and related contaminant analyses.
Enforcement posture
The regulations are binding under Guyana’s Fisheries Act. Schedule Four states that batches or production lots exceeding the maximum limits in Table 1 or Table 2 are unfit for human consumption and must not be placed on the market or must be withdrawn from the market. Regulation 23 requires fishery products placed on the market for human consumption not to contain veterinary-drug residues or environmental contaminants above Schedule Four and Schedule Eleven levels.
Regulation 3 empowers the Veterinary Public Health Unit to enforce the regulations. Regulation 237 makes offences under the regulations punishable on summary conviction by a fine of five hundred thousand Guyana dollars.
History of changes
The Fisheries (Products) Regulations 2023 were made on 28 July 2023 by the Minister of Agriculture and published in the Official Gazette on 29 July 2023 as Legal Supplement B. Regulation 238 revokes the Fishery Products Regulations, Regulation No. 7 of 2003. This bulk-ingest pass did not evaluate later amendments.
How it compares
The Guyana schedule is a fishery-specific framework, comparable to seafood contaminant schedules in Codex, EU, Costa Rica, Mexico, and other national fishery regulations. The commodity-specific ppm table and the generic ppb table overlap, so comparisons should preserve the source table, product grouping, unit, and metal species rather than collapsing them into one row.
The mercury rows are not methylmercury rows. Occurrence studies reporting methylmercury, total mercury, or unspeciated mercury should be compared only after species and legal basis are made explicit.
Sources
Update history
The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and the full version history lives in git. When DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.
| Commit | Date | Change | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| a8052bb | 2026-08-09 | major | 1 source added; contamination-profile values revised; 7 sections added |