Primary duty of Health Department is to check contaminants in imported fish

 Who checks 45 MT of fish that enter Assam daily?

STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI: The Department of Fisheries claims that it produces an adequate quantity of fish to meet the demand in the state. On the contrary, around 45 MT of fish imported from Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, etc. enter the state every day. Most of such fish do contain formalin in excess, and this has come to light in the biology laboratory of Nowgong College.

Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said, "I have taken up the matter with the Fishery Minister. We will conduct more tests to ascertain whether imported fish contains excessive amounts of formalin. Once ascertained, we will ban fish imports."

The report of formalin contamination in fish has kept the state Health and Fisheries Department officials on their toes today. Around four years ago, the then minister of state for health did raise a hue and cry over the formalin in fish. He even banned the import of fish from outside the state, mainly from Andhra Pradesh. That prompted a team from Andhra Pradesh to visit the state and had a discussion with the minister. The team assured the state government that they would not send any fish with formalin to Assam. The inspectors of the state did visit the markets for a few days to check for such fish. Slowly and certainly, the inspection stopped, and the situation of formalin contamination in imported fish is now back to square one in Assam.

However, the latest report of formalin in imported fish has kept the food inspectors on their toes, as has the Department of Fisheries.

Fishery Minister Parimal Suklabaidya said, "The prime responsibility of the Fishery Department is to promote fish production. However, the department cannot afford to check the quality of the fish. We request academic institutions like Gauhati University, Assam Agriculture University, and others to conduct studies on contaminants in fish like formalin.

The report of Nowgong College said that 15 percent poisonous formalin has been found in imported fish in Assam, besides the presence of 0.003 percent cadmium and 0.015 percent arsenic.

Sources in the Health Department said that they have no manpower to check the imported fish in every market. "If the government adopts a mechanism to check imported fish at the entry points to the state, the efforts may yield results," a source in the department said.

The Fishery Department sources, on the other hand, said that in 2021-22, the fish production in the state was 4.17 lakh MT, against the requirement of 4.06 lakh MT. If this is right, how come around 45 MT of fish enter the state every day?

According to a study, for over 90 percent of the total population in the state, fish is a staple diet. The per capita fish consumption per year in the state is 12 kg.

The sources of fish in the state are the Brahmaputra and the Barak and their 53 tributaries, 2072 beels, 341 forest oxbow lakes, 6266 water body swamps, etc., and 5.45 lakh ponds and tanks.

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