Smt. Rajni Sekhari Sibal, IAS, Secretary, Department of Fisheries, Govt. of India visited ICAR-Central Institute of Fisheries Technology, Cochin on 4 April 2019. The visit of the Secretary, Dept. of Fisheries was considered as most important in the context of the formation of new Department of Fisheries under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare as per Cabinet Secretariat's Gazette Notification vide F. No. 1/21/21/2018-Cab, dated 5 February 2019.
During the visit, Dr. Ravishankar C.N., Director, ICAR-CIFT gave a brief report about the role and accomplishments of the Institute in the harvest and post-harvest research in fisheries. He highlighted that the Institute has been working since last six decades in a convergence mode with all the research and development organizations like different State Fisheries Departments, NIPHAT, CIFNET, MPEDA, NFDB, EIA, FSSAI, etc.
Highlighting the major achievements of ICAR-CIFT, Dr. Ravishankar stated that tremendous impact in the sector has been created by the Institute in the recent past 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” to detect adulteration of formaldehyde and ammonia in fresh fish; providing technical consultancy to Cochin Shipyard Limited for design and development of Long Liner cum Gillnetter for deep sea fishing; offering business incubation facilities for promoting start-ups in fisheries and playing a crucial role in formulation of KMFRA guidelines and giving major inputs for preparing National Blue Economy Policy.
Smt. Sibal also visited different NABL accredited laboratories of the Institute, National Referral Lab facilities, Gear fabrication facilities, Engineering Workshop, and BPD Unit and was highly impressed with the technologies of the Institute. She showed interest in organizing exclusive workshops on harvesting and post-harvesting for wide-scale dissemination of technologies to various fisheries stakeholders across the country. Later, the Secretary had a discussion with members of the Sea Food Exporters Association of Kerala to know the status of the seafood trade, its problems, and opportunities. The meeting was also attended by Shri K.S. Srinivas, IAS, Chairman MPEDA; Shri Alex Ninan, President, Seafood Exporters Association of India (Kerala Region) along with more than 30 seafood exporters from Kerala.
