A draft of the Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) pangasius standards is now available for public comment, the Global Aquaculture Alliance’s Standards Oversight Committee (SOC), which is guiding development of the standards, announced on Thursday.
The deadline for public comment is 31 March.
After evaluating the feedback, the GAA’s Pangasius Technical Committee will consider revising the standards and then pass them along to the SOC for further approval.
The BAP program is a comprehensive, metrics-based certification program for aquaculture, including hatcheries, farms and processing plants. BAP standards encompass environmental and social responsibility, animal welfare, food safety and traceability.
BAP standards have been developed for shrimp, tilapia and channel catfish farms, hatcheries and processing facilities. In addition to standards for pangasius, standards for feed mills are in the works. The GAA expects standards for farmed salmon to be complete by mid-2010 and for mussels later this year.
