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Improving fish production systems is essential to ensure that this food is more widely consumed by people, especially in poor countries, where it can provide micronutrients to people suffering from malnutrition, according to different experts. The World Bank Pawan Patil said today at a conference in Rome that diets low in nutrients so influence poverty that, according to some estimates, malnutrition affects each year up to 11% global gross domestic product.
Some 815 million people worldwide suffer from hunger, 2,000 million micronutrients and more than 1,900 million are overweight, among other forms of malnutrition.
Fish, rich in vitamins, zinc, iron and calcium, can help improve food, for which "failures in supply and demand" of this product must be corrected, investments made, and these species promoted. According to Mr. Patil, the expert from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Richard Abila, said that he was striving to encourage small-scale production, reduce losses of fish (which can reach 40% in the majority of cases).
Fish consumption, which averaged 20 kilos per person per year in 2014, is even higher in rich countries, adds Abila.
Among the countries that can increase their consumption is Brazil, according to the specialist of the University of Agriculture of Sao Paulo Juliana Antunes, who mentioned the " poor quality of the fish "and its high price as two of the
A problem relates to the transformation, in the absence of facilities that force many people to manage the fishery resources to the outside and without taking the appropriate measures. "It's very difficult to keep the cold chain in such a hot country," said Antunes, who pointed to surveys that Brazilians prefer to take chilled, canned or salt-preserved fish.
The WorldFish International Organization, Shakuntala Thilstedt, encouraged to improve access to some small fish, which account for one third of the calcium and half of the vitamin A ingested by the poor population of Bangladesh, who " could not replace them "if they were missing
Thilstedt also recommended the consumption of this fish in pregnant and lactating women in order to guarantee the health of their children and to fight against child malnutrition.
The experts present at the conference also discussed the need to avoid contamination of the water and, consequently, the fish that people eat then. Similarly, projects such as those used to control the quality of seafood or to badyze the content of fish samples in the waters off the coast of Africa were presented.
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