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Quality control lab for marine products in Odisha to address export concerns
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SME Times News Bureau | 20 Feb, 2018
A state of the art quality
control laboratory to check traces of antibiotics in shrimps and other
marine products was inaugurated here on Monday.
It would address
concerns of USA, Japan and the European Union (EU) for stringent quality
controls over exports of seafood from India.
Set up by the
Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA), the fifth such
laboratory in the country is fully equipped to check presence of
chloramphenicol and nitrofuran, the two banned antibiotics for which
importers in US and Japan have particularly insisted for analysis.
Accredited
by National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration and
approved by Export Inspection Council of India under Laboratory Approval
Scheme (LAS), the laboratory has started analysing Chloramphenicol and
Nitrofuran metabolites in samples drawn under the National Residue
Control Programme (NRCP) and those drawn from the market, said an
official.
If any samples are screened positive in ELISA Labs at
Bhubaneswar, Balasore and Sonarpur, these will be checked and confirmed
at the quality control laboratory, which has also developed methodology
for another antibiotic, retracycline, and its validation is under
process.
"By setting up its laboratory in Odisha, MPEDA has met a
longstanding demand from the seafood exporters. Our seafood exporters
have set global benchmarks. We must follow this benchmark which is going
to lead the seafood sector in the next few decades," said Odisha's
Agriculture Production Commissioner Gagan Kumar Dhal.
MPEDA
Chairman A. Jayathilak said there is a sustained demand from the
industry to have a laboratory with the most modern equipment to identify
the antibiotic residues up to the lowest and most microscopic levels.
"We
have had some instances of presence of antibiotics in the past,
especially the most commonly detected Chloramphenicol and Nitrofuran
metabolites, and it has led to immediate response. We pass on the
information immediately down the stream to the exporters and the farmers
but you need to have the best equipment and manpower in place for it,"
he noted.
Alongside, the lab is developing facilities for
validation of sulphonamides. After completion of testing facilities for
tetracycline and sulphonamides, the lab will be fully ready for analysis
of commercial samples meant for export to the EU also. Currently, these
substances are being tested at other QC laboratories of MPEDA.
At
present, the QC Laboratory at Bhubaneswar can analyse samples submitted
by farmers, processors and exporters as part of their quality assurance
for residue free raw material for processing and exporting.
For clarifications/queries, please contac
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