When SeaFood Business readers receive their November issues, which should be any day now, I hope they’ll glean something new and interesting about aquaculture certification and the high-stakes competition emerging among the standard setters. The responsible-farmed-seafood-themed issue’s Top Story, Eco-label Lowdown, takes a closer look at two of the leading organizations — the Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA) and the upcoming Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) — and how each is jockeying for position in the global marketplace.
Attendees of the Seafood Choices Alliance Seafood Summit in Paris this past January got the unique opportunity to witness the two groups (along with not-to-be-forgotten GlobalGAP, a major player in the European market) face off in an informative debate titled, “Aquaculture Standards: Winner Take All?” My story picks up where they left off.
The provocative title for the Paris session might have been a bit off target, because neither group shows any signs of yielding; there may in fact be a “winner” one day, but that day is not on the visible horizon. The discussion did capture the competitive spirit between the schemes, which ratchets higher with every milestone the groups reach.
While GAA has a firmly established a foothold in the market, particularly regarding the production of shrimp in Southeast Asia, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF, which founded the ASC along with the Dutch Sustainable Trade Initiative) is also riding high now that half of its standards are complete through its comprehensive Aquaculture Dialogues stakeholder meetings. Jose Villalon, WWF’s U.S. managing director-aquaculture, proudly declares that the dialogues are not the “noble academic exercise” that its critics claimed it would be. Villalon and ASC CEO Philip Smith told me that ASC standards are robust and set the bar high enough so that only 20 percent of global farmed seafood producers will have a shot at certification.
Meanwhile, Peter Redmond, VP of development for GAA, fends off critics who say its Best Aquaculture Practices program is industry-driven and not stringent enough. Yet by focusing on the entire production system — hatcheries, feed mills, farms and processing plants — BAP addresses just about any concern a seafood buyer might have about farmed products (BAP currently has 26 official endorsers). And, as Redmond stresses, BAP-certified product is available now.
Both schemes are strong and their standards are thorough. So, how does a company — either a supplier or a retail buyer — decide between the two? One of the United States’ top pangasius importers, QVD Seafood of Bellevue, Wash., is going through that process now. President Chris December shared with me the checklist his company used to compare the two schemes and said that QVD would be picking one of the two programs by year’s end. December made it clear that it’s no easy decision.
“Both [schemes] are right in many indications. It’s up to the industry to look at it and make sure that it’s one, approachable, and two, allows for only a few committed companies to achieve,” he said. “If everyone achieves the standards then we really don’t have much.”
True. However, would setting the environmental-performance bar so high discourage some producers from seeking certification — any certification? Progress toward better practices and sustainability might not be best served if the carrot of certification were seen as an insurmountable challenge, or if the goalposts were constantly moving. Perhaps a tiered approach, with one scheme serving as the “gold standard,” a recurring theme in the story, is what the industry needs.
But which one would that be? That’s where you come in. The market, as they say, always decides.
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