Daijiworld Media Network – Mangalore (SP)

Mangalore, Jan 20: Gavin Lindsay Wall, UNO’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s India representative, noted that globally, over 100 crore people suffer from lack of food security and that they are deprived of even one square meal a day. To find a solution to this problem, an action plan has been handed over to 192 member countries, he added.

He was speaking after inaugurating the three-day seminar on ‘Salmonella Bacteria Control in Stable Pisciculture through Bio Security Measures’ being held at Hotel Taj Gateway in the city on Tuesday January 19, under the aegis of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Organization (UNO) and the Unesco-Mircen Microbiology department of the fisheries college here.

“The high level meeting of global experts on food security held in the year 2008 had made certain suggestions like increasing the production of food grains, bringing more land under agriculture, keeping the food prices within the reach of the poor, improving the standards of living, optimum use of food products etc., to tackle this problem,” he explained.

Another FAO representative, Dr I Karunasagar, said that people get infected because of salmonella contained in fish. “The countries that import fish take abundant caution about the existence of salmonella in the fish imported by them. A large percentage of fish exported by India and some other countries get rejected because of excessive salmonella presence. Salmonella bacteria enter the bodies of the fish through the excreta of animals, birds and human beings and also from the effluents. Salmonella is dangerous for health. Therefore, there is a need to scientifically breed the fish,” he asserted.

Dr Balakrishna Nair, representative of the union health ministry, said that the increasing population and spread of diseases like cholera in slums, have been posing challenges for managing food security.

Representatives of various countries from north and south America, Europse, Asia, Arab countries, Malaysia, Cambodia, Bangladesh, USA, Denmark, Chile, Mexico, Spain, Italy and some other countries are taking part in the workshop. Head of the department of Karnataka Veterinary, Animal and Fisheries Sciences University’s microbiology department, Dr Indrani Karunasagar, is the convener of the programme.