India Honey Alliance hosts its third Annual General Meeting in New Delhi

Celebrating its successful journey over the last three years, India Honey Alliance (IHA), recently held its third AGM in New Delhi. The event featured close to 100 attendees, including the beekeepers, IHA members, FPOs, Aggregators, Brand Retailers, Scientific Community and other industry stakeholders.

Kamala Vardhana Rao, chief executive officer, FSSAI graced the event as the Guest of Honor. He was accompanied by Dr. Satyen Kumar Panda, Advisor, Quality Assurance, FSSAI. Other distinguished government officers included Dr. RS Rajpoot, Small Farmers Agri-Consortium, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, GOI, and Dr Komal Chauhan, Dean Outreach, NIFTEM-K. Industry stalwarts included top brands, exporters as well as the top bee-keepers of India, Rahul Awasthi, Chairperson, IHA; Mansoor Ali, CSMO, Hamdard Foods; Pranav Sharma, Baidyanath; Ranjan Mitra, R&D Head, Dabur; Vinit Singh, Brij Honey; Amit Gupta, Indocan Honey; Narinder Jaryal, BDM, Thermo Fisher Scientific; Naveen Garg, MM Kashmiri Honey; Subhash Kamboj, Kamboj Honey Bee Farm; Vinod Kumar, One Circle Foundation. Deepak Jolly, Secretary General, IHA and Namrata Khanna, Director, IHA, presided over the meeting.

The dignitaries highlighted how IHA has emerged as the unified voice of all stakeholders in the honey marketplace, within a few years of its inception and how the IHA has been working progressively for holistic development and creating a more enabling environment for the beekeeping sector. It is worthy to note that IHA has been recognized by the Government as one of the key stakeholders in all honey related matters.

In his keynote address, Sh. Kamala Vardhana Rao, chief executive officer, FSSAI, highlighted FSSAI’s commitment to supporting the Honey ecosystem through resolving ongoing issues like HMF, and harmonization of labs & interpretation of the regulations & standards for honey parameters. He was supportive of the IHA efforts & agreed that technical training programs, consumer awareness & looking at the standards for honey was a key element. He congratulated IHA on being one of the topmost organizations trying to understand the challenges of the industry, generating consumer awareness and working towards improving the productivity levels every year. Mr. Rao urged all the stakeholders to work towards creating demand for honey and promoting higher consumption of honey.

The AGM commenced with a traditional lamp lighting ceremony and a welcome address from Deepak Jolly, Secretary General of IHA. Namrata Khanna, Director of IHA welcomed the guests and provided an overview of IHA’s extensive reach, initiatives and achievements over the past years, including the prestigious MoU signed with NIFTEM-K.

Dr Komal Chauhan, dean Outreach & HoD, NIFTEM-K appreciated IHA’s efforts and said that the collaboration with IHA has proven to be extremely fruitful and value driven. Chauhan also highlighted that NIFTEM is coming up with a master trainers program for beekeeping and honey testing.

Rahul Awasthi, chairperson, India Honey Alliance also shared IHA’s vision for growth, for all members of the value chain. He said, “Our motto at IHA is to uplift the beekeepers and work towards improving the state of the entire honey ecosystem. We have received great affirmations from the industry stakeholders which further inspires us to take IHA to the next level.”

FSSAI CEO also mentioned they will be calling for a stakeholder consultation for honey on all aspects across the honey value chain and ecosystem. During the event, IHA and its notable members requested FSSAI to introduce consumer awareness programs along with IHA across the country in order to bust the myths around honey.

At the event/ meeting, experts collectively agreed that beekeeping is a very fragmented and unorganized sector, and that the Government and the entire Honey ecosystem should collaborate to take strong measures in flourishing the beekeeping sector, increasing the export and production of honey, creating sustainable income and employment for the beekeepers. The dignitaries further mentioned that the industry has to come together and collaborate to grow and improve the ecosystem of sourcing, processing, testing and packaging of honey, for both domestic and global markets.