International Symposium and 7th Conference of Indian Meat Science Association on “New horizons for augmenting meat production and processing to ensure nutritional security, food safety and environmental sustainability” was inaugurated today by the Department of Livestock Products Technology, Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (GADVASU), Ludhiana in collaboration with Indian Meat Science Association. Dr. Manish Kumar Chatli, Organizing Secretary and Head of the Department told that more than 200 scientists, academicians, researchers and postgraduate students from throughout the world are attending the conference. Dr Harpreet Kochhar, Chief Veterinary Officer for Canada and Associate Vice-President of Canadian Food Inspection Agency was Chief Guest for the conference. Dr. C.K. Thota, Director, Allanasons Pvt. Ltd. and Mr. O.P. Arora, Chairman AOV group both were guest of honor.
Dr. Simrat Sagar Singh, Dean Post Graduate Studies addressed august gathering on the behalf of Dr. A.S. Nanda, Vice-Chancellor, GADVASU.
Dr. J.S. Sidhu from University of Kuwait revealed his views on ‘Capacity building in food sector’ whereas Dr. Thota put light on “New horizons for augmenting Indian exports ensuring nutritional security, food safety and environmental sustainability”. Dr. V.V. Kukkarni, President, Indian Meat Science Association discussed in detail about ‘Indian Meat industry current status, challenges and further prospectus’.
Two MoU’s were also signed with Raja Food and Kansal Agro Food for value addition of egg products with special emphasis on egg paneer. A compendium and CD of lectures were released by dignitaries and officers of University included Dr. S.S. Singh, Dr. J.P.S. Gill, Dr. Parkash Singh Brar and Dr. B.M. Naveen.
IMSA Lifetime Achievement awards 2016 were conferred on Dr. Sushil Kumar, Dr. John Abraham, Dr. Shanmugham, Dr. T.R.K. Murthy, Dr. Nagendra Sharma, Dr.Kondaiah and Dr. B.N. Kowate. Innovative Entrepreneurship award was conferred to Sh. Mohit Raja.
Dr. Chatli told that conference was aimed to carry out brainstorming discussions and presentations to design the future strategies related to scientific slaughter with animal welfare, hygienic processing, packaging, preservation, food safety and quality assurance programmes. Dr. Chatli told that technical sessions on meat production and fresh meat quality, meat processing and value addition, preservation and packaging of livestock products, safety and quality assurance and meat biotechnology will be very useful for scientists and other stake holders related with industry.
Dr. Simrat Sagar Singh lauded that the Conference is touching very important aspects on environmental safety and value addition of products. He further told that the conference will go a long way to address the challenges in meat science. Besides Conference a unique event ‘Industry-Academia-Farmers Interface’ was also organized bringing together all the stake holders of the meat industry on a single platform to discuss problems of farmers and challenges to industry.
