GSSI announces six new companies as partners

The Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative, or GSSI, has announced six new commercial partners that have endorsed its efforts to evaluate the reliability of seafood certification programs.

In addition, in recent months, several globally prominent certification schemes have been benchmarked by GSSI, including the Iceland RFM program in November and the Alaska RFM in June, and GSSI’s public consultation of the Marine Stewardship Council’s scheme recently ended, signifying the program’s benchmarking is nearly complete. A recent Financial Times article reviewed the GSSI’s progress since it was launched last year, with Audun Lem, deputy director of the FAO’s fisheries and aquaculture department, offering praise for the initiative.

The GSSI benchmark will provide “more equivalency among schemes, reduce overall certification costs for producers and provide more clarity in the market,” Lem told the Financial Times.

GSSI program director Herman Wisse told the newspaper the vision for GSSI is for it to become an umbrella platform for stakeholders in the seafood supply chain to discuss common problems, including the scale of over-exploitation.

“We have the public sector, the private sector, NGOs working on global challenges, shaping solutions for the future of the seafood sector,” he said.

The six companies that recently pledged to join GSSI include U.S.-based Mariner Seafood, Spanish firm Cabomar, Russian harvester Norebo, Iceland-based HB Grandi, Dutch firm Klaas Puul and Greenlandic firm Royal Greenland. Leaders from each company offered verbal endorsements of GSSI in a press release on 8 December.

Jack Flynn, CEO and founder, Mariner Seafood: “Joining GSSI was a natural choice - GSSI’s vision of more sustainable seafood for everyone reflects our commitment to our customers. We look forward to working jointly on the challenges facing the seafood sector.”

Eduardo Freire, Commercial Director, Cabomar: “We are proud to be the first Spanish company to join GSSI’s partnership and call on our industry peers across Europe to follow. We will now be accepting GSSI recognized schemes in sourcing certified seafood.”

Sergey Sennikov, Chief Sustainability Officer, Norebo: “Becoming part of GSSI was a straightforward decision. The seafood sector needs more clarity on certification and GSSI provides the ideal solution to our common challenge.”

Vilhjálmur Vilhjálmsson, CEO of HB Grandi: “GSSI is a unique opportunity for us to collaborate with global stakeholders and drive change towards a more sustainable seafood industry.”

Maiko van der Meer, CEO of Klaas Puul: “We joined GSSI as we fully support its mission to ensure confidence in the supply and promotion of certified seafood. We encourage businesses to help us build a level playing field for certification and join the GSSI partnership.”

Mikael Thinghuus, CEO of Royal Greenland: “Individual responses will not work for the global challenges of our sector. We are proud to be part of GSSI’s unique partnership of industry, NGOs, governments and the FAO and encourage more companies to join us in shaping the seafood sector’s future.”

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