The Marine Products Export Development Authority has certified SVR Hatcheries, East Godavari District, AP, as the first shrimp hatchery in the country to get SHAPHARI certification for the production of antibiotic-free seed after successfully completing the mandatory audits.
SHAPHARI is a Sanskrit word meaning superior quality of fishery product suitable for human consumption. This certification of hatchery scheme will help farmers to easily identify the good quality shrimp seed producer whereas the certified hatcheries are benefitted by higher demand for their seeds among the farmers.
KS Srinivas, Chairman, MPEDA, distributed the SHAPHARI Certificate to Prathipati Veerabhadra Kumar, Managing Partner of SVR Hatcheries through video conference.
Largest exported seafood
Frozen shrimp is the largest exported seafood item constituting 50.58 per cent in quantity and 73.21 per cent in terms of total US dollar earnings during 2019-20. Incidence of rejection of seafood consignments sourced from farms due to the presence of antibiotic residue is a matter of concern for Indian exporters.
To address the food safety issue in farmed produce, apart from National Residue Control Programme and Pre-Harvest Test initiatives implemented by MPEDA, development of certification scheme ‘SHAPHARI is another milestone initiative to address the issue.
The certification of aquaculture was proposed as a market-based tool for hatchery/farmers in order to adopt Good Aquaculture Practices and produce good quality antibiotic free shrimp products addressing food safety concerns of global consumers. This scheme is based on FAO’s technical guidelines on aquaculture certification.
The entire process of certification is implemented through a webportal (https://aquacert.mpeda.gov.in) to minimise human errors and to ensure higher credibility and transparency in the scheme implementation.