Chandrababu Naidu requests Bihar CM to send teams for quality check in AP Fish produce

AP CM N Chandrababu Naidu requested Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to allow AP fish produce into that State, on the wake of recent allegations on use of Formalin in preserving the food, on Monday in a letter.

In his three page letter, Naidu requested to examine the facts and arrange to issue necessary instructions to depute technical team from Bihar state for quality check in AP.

He said that some allegations raised on fish supplies of AP State as using Formalin as preservative for fish being transported to Bihar state. Baidu requested for extending support to ascertain the genuineness of the allegations and continue the support for accepting the fish imports from the StateReg.

He explained that AP has been exporting fish to Bihar State and having reciprocal trade busnness since long time. The AP State Fish Farmers Assocsation have represented that, their fish trade in Bihar state is badly affected due to some misapprehension on alleged usage of formalin in the fish supplies to Bihar State from AP and appealed the Government of Andhra Pradesh to intervene and have dialogue with Chief Minister of Bihar to restore the good fish trade relations for mutual benefit of the States.

In this context, he brought the following points to Nitish Kumar notice for examining the facts.

The aquaculture farmers and merchants are strongly denying the use of Formalin allegations stating that, it is nothing but defaming the AP State fish supplies and ultimately to disturb the good fish trade relations between two states.

The Department of Fisheries and Institute of Preventive Medicine, Public (Heath) Lab and Food (Health) Administration (IPM), Govt. of AP have been conducting surprising raids on fish packing sheds and whole sale fish outlets and tested for formalin with field test kits of CIFT, Kochi to ascertain the genuineness of the allegations, but no cases of usmg of formalin/ Ammonia in fishery products are reported so far.

The Government constituted District Level Task Force Teams and State Level Technical and Monitoring teams consisting of Multi-disciplinary departments for ensuring the quality of fish supplies to other states

Accordingly, the District Level Task Force teams are inspecting regulariy on random basis and issuing quality certificates and affixing the authorized stickers for all checked fish conSignments.

During the meeting convened with all stake holders and officers of related departments (MPEDA, Drugs Control, IPM, EIA, CIFT, APPCB, AP Food Processmg Society, Dept. of Fisheries), the Aquaculture farmers assoaations have informed that, they will extend all sort of support for any type of quality checks at fish packing or distribution points.

They have requested to invite a team of officers from Bihar state for random and surprising inspections at fish packing sheds (about 170 fish packing sheds are located in our state meant for fish packing and export to other states) for any type of quality check including formalin test and the State Govt will extend all sort of support to such team by providing all logistic arrangements to enable to carry out the inspections in free and fair atmosphere.

Further it is also suggested that, quality checks for formalin may be taken up at the borders of Bihar state to ensure the genumeness of the allegations made on fish exports of our state, for which our state government wrll depute a team of officers to carry out the quality check in the presence of your technical team.

If required, Quality Certification by Dept. of Fisheries and IPM of Govt. of AP will be issued as per the procedure as suggested by Bihar state, Naidu assured.