Mangaluru: The recent incident of 200 taking ill after eating delicacies made out of fish heads has been diagnosed by doctors to be a case of Ciguatera Fish Poisoning (CFP).
It may be recalled that this incident had occurred in Mangaluru, which had stirred a sense of panic among the locals. Keeping the incident as the background, Minister for Food and Civil Supplies U T Khader said that a food safety committee will be put into place in order to avoid such incidents.
It was revealed that ‘Chemberi’ (as the locals call it) known worldwide as Red Snappers were caught by fishermen more than 200 nautical miles away from the coast. The jurisdiction of Indian Exclusive Economic Zone does not permit fish caught outside the 200 nautical mile border as the fish caught beyond this limit feed on a poisonous variety of algae. In this particular case the Red Snappers were found to have been fished from the outer ring of the Exclusive Economic Zone.
Though this poisoning had been reported in parts of Coastal India, the number of people taking ill has never been in such a huge scale.
A priority meeting was conducted by the Food and Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Minister U T Khader on Thursday in the DC’s office where doctors from various research institutes spoke about the outbreak of CFP.
Scientists from Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI), Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA), State Fisheries Department and College of Fisheries and the Animal and Fisheries Sciences University in Bidar spoke in the meeting about CFP and how to keep away from it.
Ashok Kumar, the Deputy Director of MPEDA said that efforts are being made to know the location of catching the red snappers through GPS so that the fishermen know where not to fish.
Senior scientist of CMFRI, Dr. Pratibha said, “We must know what caused the CFP break out. Ban on varieties, as of now is not a solution to the problem. It is the fishing zones that needs to be monitored.”
Dr. Iddya Karunasagar, a Professor on fishery microbiology spoke about the algae bloom that causes the poisoning. She said, “There is a particular algae which turns out to be harmful for the fish which consume it. Several algae consuming fish get infected by CFP upon eating the algae. The CFP pathogens make it’s way to the head of the fish and resides there. Cooking the fish in any manner will not get rid of the pathogens since it is heat stable. Underwater predators which eat infected fish also get poisoned and humans are no exceptions.”
