RAF Offers New Online Courses on EHP Management
The Responsible Aquaculture Foundation (RAF) has expanded its online education program with two new courses on managing EHP at aquaculture facilities for shrimp. EHP is an acronym for a disease named after Enterocytozoon hepatopenaei, a tiny parasite that disrupts the digestive systems of shrimp and results in slow growth and wide size variation.
Affecting shrimp facilities located in Asia, EHP is difficult to eradicate because it is transmitted via tiny, resistant spores that can survive for extended periods. The courses focus on critical control points and outline recommended practices for minimizing the impacts of the disease.
“EHP is a particularly challenging disease because its spores survive standard disinfection practices and its infections often go undetected, yet its impacts on shrimp growth rate can be devastating,” RAF President George Chamberlain said. “Our RAF courses are designed to help farmers and hatchery operators learn how to diagnose the disease and deal with it via the industry’s current best practices.”
The most effective approach for controlling EHP is through strict biosecurity measures that include treatment of ponds and tanks, stocking shrimp that are free of EHP and system management that avoids overfeeding and accumulation of sludge. The RAF courses – Managing Enterocytozoon hepatopenaei at Shrimp Farms and Managing Enterocytozoon hepatopenaei at Shrimp Hatcheries – are now available at http://edu.responsibleaqua.org.
The online material can be accessed by PC, tablet or smart phone. In conjunction with the release of the EHP courses, the Responsible Aquaculture Foundation is pleased to announce Hanaqua Tech Inc. as the first licensed supporter of the RAF Education Program. Hanaqua, an aquaculture feed and technical service company based in Taiwan, will present RAF’s course content on managing EHP and early mortality syndrome during a series of workshops in India. RAF encourages other companies to enlist as supporters to help extend the training to more farmers.
The Responsible Aquaculture Foundation is developing additional courses to help the global aquaculture industry better manage diseases like EHP. RAF’s ongoing goal is to create educational materials that address a full range of aquaculture topics with embedded learning checks and certificates for completion. For further information on the courses and how to support RAF, contact Steve Hart at steve.hart@responsibleaqua.org.
About RAF
Responsible Aquaculture Foundation’s mission is to deliver an innovative global knowledge transfer platform/mechanism to enable the responsible development of a sustainable global industry that can meet the demands for nutritious, safe aquaculture products.
