Experts stress importance of Seafood safety

Bhimavaram: A day-long international seminar was held at Bhimavaram on Seafood Safety on Wednesday. The seminar focused at educating the local traders about safety and regulatory environment in the export market. This seminar comprised of three in-depth sessions on seafood quality testing for Europe, recent updates in food safety systems, and latest trends in the global seafood market.

An overview of European seafood market and Food Law was delivered by Dr Ron Wacker who is the Senior Vice President at TÜV SÜD, Germany. He touched upon various testing practices, and benefits of collaborating with independent testing, inspection and certification organisations.

The session highlighted key insights such as EU, which constitutes of 28 member states, consumes 12.3 million tonnes of seafood while producing nearly 50 per cent of the volume of 6.2 million tonnes. The vast volume of consumption is also met with imports, making it the single largest region for imported seafood and aquaculture products. He stated that, the net supply to EU is estimated to increase by 1.6 million tonnes which indicates promising opportunities for Indian seafood exporters.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr Pankaj Jaiminy, Asst. Vice President (Food, Health & Cosmetics)- Testing, Certification & Inspection at TÜV SÜD South Asia said, “The response we have received for our Seafood Safety seminar clearly points out the motivation among aquaculture and seafood exporters to contribute to the growth of seafood exports from India. As a global testing and certification expert, it is our endeavour to apply our global expertise to the advancement of safety practices in the local market.

Seafood cluster in the southern region demonstrates an inspirational spirit whose foundation is indigenous produce which has great demand in countries particularly in the EU. In order to keep this momentum steady, we look forward to collaborating more deeply with exporters in Bhimavaram.” Opening the discussion on the recent updates of Food Safety System ertification 22000 V4.0, Rahul Soman of TÜV SÜD, highlighted some of the key changes and new requirements for aspects such as unannounced audits, transport and storage.

He also spoke about additional scheme requirements for service management, food fraud prevention, product labeling and food defence to name a few.The company recently announced that its state-of-the-art seafood testing lab in Visakhapatnam obtained the prestigious EIC (Export Inspection Council) accreditation. With this accreditation, the Vizag lab can cater to the entire seafood export and aquaculture belt in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa and equip them to be able to seamlessly export to international markets.