Ecocert India Announces Special Certification Services for Diverse Organic Livestock Products

April 18, 2012 - PRLog -- Aurangabad, On the occasion of its third founders’ day celebration, Dr Selvam Daniel, Managing Director of Ecocert India Pvt. Ltd. announced the launch of special certification services  for diverse organic livestock products. The founder’s day is celebrated in the memory of late Dr Alexander Daniel who was instrumental in beginning India operations of Ecocert SA, a France based pioneer company in the organic certification world. Every year in the first fortnight of April, Ecocert India celebrates late Dr Alexander Daniel’s centenary. This year too on 3rd April founder’s day was celebrated. It was then Dr Selvam Daniel, the present Managing Director of Ecocert India made this important announcement about launch of special certification programs for range of organic livestock products.
“India is such a blessed country, where even today for the larger segment of the population, agriculture is the mainstay. This is the country where livestock e.g. cows, buffaloes and goats are an integral part of the farming system. Almost every household of a farmer will have enough livestock to meet their requirements of manure, draft energy etc. Again this is the very society which greatly relishes range of food products made out of cow and buffalo milk. And unfortunately, this is also the very society, where you find in every corner of the country increasing cases of spurious milk and milk products. That is the reason why time has come to promote the awareness about organic ways of production for all possible livestock products.” said Dr Daniel.  
“Today we can see almost every livestock product posing grave danger to consumer’s health. The livestock viz. cows and buffaloes are being fed on contaminated fodder coming from chemical agriculture and being administered the deadly growth hormones twice a day. This very milk is basis for range of products viz. ghee, butter, paneer, curd, khoa and khoa based common Indian sweets. You take chicken eggs; they are full of traces of antibiotics. Be it mutton, chicken or any other meat, since the very animals are being grazed on conventionally grown fodder and feed material, residues of harmful pesticides do go on accumulating in the animals’ bodies thereby making their meat or their dairy products totally unpalatable for consumers; especially kids.”
“Again there are newer malpractices getting exposed every other day involving preparation of duplicate milk, ghee and khoa in this country which are so rampant and bizarre that they are enough to bemuse any sane human. Hence, never ever in the history of this country its residents were so greatly in need of livestock products in their pure, natural form and never ever before it was so difficult to obtain them. We hope to bridge this gap in near future with aggressive promotion of our services.” says Dr Amol Nirban, Business Development Manager of Ecocert India.  
When asked if there is new standards developed for this purpose, Dr Dhananjay Aghav, head of livestock department said, “the certification procedure or standards or specific requirements isn’t any different for these livestock products. The products will be certified in the premises of existing legislative framework only. The whole idea is to market these services aggressively and make consumers aware of the slow-poisoning they are exposing themselves in multiple ways and make producers/manufacturers aware that they can actually cater to this new demand by resorting to organic certification programs meant for respective sector viz. dairy, poultry, goat farming, bee-keeping, processing etc. Soon we are going to participate in different livestock expos across the country with these diverse services and do every possible attempt to publicize them.”
“Important thing is, today a caring and health-conscious mother needs to understand that if she got to know about organic milk from somewhere and she is feeding her child the very safe organic milk, she hasn’t got hold of the panacea for her problems. The risk of her child and family getting into a range of health troubles still persists, if they continue to eat non-organic conventional ghee, butter, curd, common sweets made out of khoa, paneer, eggs coming from conventional caged poultry which are fully laden with antibiotics, honey coming from apiaries which are placed in chemically infested areas, meat of animals which were housed in ill-managed stables etc. So one has to make a complete shift towards a more healthy and ‘fearless’ and guilt-free option as far as those all livestock products are concerned which find their entry to our stomach.” says Aghav.
“Besides the organic certification programs for these commodities of human consumption we are also concentrating on promotion of organic pet food, animal feed and poultry feed. While we believe livestock and poultry feed is important because even in organic management there is possibility of buying readymade feed by the owners of organic dairy and poultry farms and who must have a risk-free alternative available at hand, organic pet food is certainly a novel concept. But for a certain growing urban class in Indian cities which tend to love their pets as deeply as their kids, having a choice of buying organic pet food is something they will jump for at any first instance with pleasure, we believe.” says Nirban.
“Finally,” said Dr Daniel, “it’s not just about consumers, it’s not just about finding newer market segments and it’s also not just about allowing the organic market to diversify itself with all those innumerable options of organic livestock products, but it is also necessarily about the very animals, birds, bees whose products we consume. It’s about re-introducing the culture of rearing them with love, compassion, allowing them to be housed in the systems which are compatible to their natural behavior and giving them a life which could aptly be called as ‘life’.”