VIJAYAWADA: The three-day aquaculture national conference and exhibition got off to a good start in Tirupati on Friday. Various speakers at the Aquabiz 2018 stressed the need for expansion of the domestic consumer market for the stability of aquaculture in the country, particularly in the State. They also emphasised the need to ensure there were no antibiotic residues in the aqua products, for increased share in the global market.
Inaugurating the event, Krishna district Zilla Parishad chairperson Gadde Anuradha said the State government was taking every effort to make aquaculture more profitable and ensure that aquaculture farmers could practise their trade sans any difficulties. “Apart from the subsidised power supply to farmers, the government has also seen to it that the farmers don’t have to renew the permissions for the aqua tanks,” she said.
Stating that fish and shrimp were packed with more nutrients than chicken and mutton, Anuradha said that people were reluctant only because of the effort needed to clean, debone and cook. “If the fish is made available as ready to cook and marketed with value addition, the domestic consumer market will expand in a short time,” she said.
Fisheries commissioner Rama Shankar Naik said the most important challenge before the aquaculture farmers was ‘how to control antibiotic residues’. “The most important reason for the consignments of aqua products getting rejected by either the European Union or the US is antibiotic residues. No one wants to own up the responsibility, but given the seriousness of the issue it needs to be discussed thoroughly,” he observed. Increasing prices of feeds, availability of quality seeds and frequent fluctuations in the market were other challenges before the aquaculture sector, he said and called upon the experts to come out with solutions.