Secretary, Department of Fisheries visits ICAR-CIFT, Cochin

4^th April, 2019, Cochin

Smt. Rajni Sekhari Sibal, IAS, Secretary, Department of Fisheries, Government of India visited the ICAR-Central Institute of Fisheries Technology, Cochin today. Smt. Sibal was on her three days official visit to Cochin.

Smt. Rajni Sekhari Sibal visited the different NABL accredited laboratories of the Institute, FSSAI lab, Net Mending Workshop, Engineering Workshop and BPD Unit, etc. The Secretary also applauded the Institute’s technologies. Smt. Sibal stressed on organization of exclusive workshops on harvesting and post-harvesting for disseminating the technologies to the various fisheries stakeholders on a wide scale across the country.

The Secretary also discussed with the members of the Sea Food Exporters Association of Kerala about the seafood trade’s status, its problems and opportunities.

Shri K.S. Srinivas, lAS., Chairman, MPEDA; Shri Alex Ninan, President, Seafood Exporters Association of India (Kerala Region) along with more than 30 sea food exporters from Kerala participated in the meeting.

Dr. Ravishankar C.N., Director, ICAR-CIFT underlined the Institute’s roles and accomplishments in the field of harvest and post-harvest research in fisheries. The Director also highlighted the Institute’s working since last six decades in a convergence mode with all the research and development organisations namely different State Fisheries Departments, NIPHAT, CIFNET, MPEDA, NFDB, EIA and FSSAI, etc.

Highlighting the Institute’s major achievements, Dr. Ravishankar stated that the tremendous impact in the sector in recent past created by the Institute because of its unique recognition by FSSAI as the “National Referral and Reference Laboratory” for fish and fish products; invention of real-time, rapid detection kit commercially known as “CIFTest Kit” for detecting the adulteration of formaldehyde and ammonia in fresh fish, etc.

(Source: Central Institute of Fisheries Technology, Cochin)