With upward of 17 sets of aquaculture certification standards worldwide, audits are becoming too numerous and costly for farmers. The need to harmonize those standards was the focus of Thursday's conference Are Certification Costs Too High For Aquaculture Producers? at the European Seafood Exposition.
The challenge of integrating standards is maintaining integrity with efficiency.
Standards bodies need to be willing to integrate standards and certification bodies need to be willing to integrate audits, said Peter Marshall, managing director of Ireland-based independent certification body IQFC.
"Certification bodies like ourselves are interested in trying to integrate standards, but it's a balance of integrity versus efficiency," said Marshall.
Certification costs to aquaculture producers have inflated over the years as more standards are developed. Standards have moved on from food safety and quality to other issues, such as environmental and social accountability standards.
Adding standards results in more costs because more qualified auditors need to be hired. If an auditor qualified to test product and process is not qualified in social and environment matters, additional auditors must be sent to the aquaculture site.
"There are a lot of checkers of checkers of checkers on the applicant. There is quite a lot of involvement by a lot of people. The key is ensuring the integrity in maintained," said Marshall.
The Aquaculture Certification Council is a U.S.-based non-governmental organization that certifies fish hatcheries, farms and processing facilities using the Global Aquaculture Alliance's Best Aquaculture Practices.
ACC and GlobalGAP, the Germany-based NGO that reduces duplication in certification standards, on Wednesday began preliminary talks on harmonizing certification standards for the aquaculture industry.
"We do recognize that as time has gone on and one standard after another has developed there is an overlap, and you get to the point where some facilities have one audit a week," said Jim Heerin, ACC president. "We recognize the need for both harmonization of standards and perhaps turning to a combination of audits."
The organizations are going to work the best they can to provide savings to certification participants, Heerin added.
"As a standard owner we have an obligation to work with accredited bodies to reduce costs to harmonize standards," said Kristian Moeller, GlobalGAP secretary.
In order to reduce the number of audits for a company, Marshall said it is important to find a certification body that knows your product and knows some of the commonalities of the standards.
Marshall provided an example of an IFQC client that has 12 different certifications and was being audited 32 times a year. IFQC was able to help the company with the integration of some of its standards and reduce the number by about 30 percent.
"From a certification body's point of view there are certification bodies out there that want to help, find them and work with them," said Peter. "It's a case of finding the balance. You don't need the biggest certification body. You need the best."
Marshall, Heerin and Moeller all agreed the Global Food Safety Initiative's model for food safety standards would be beneficial for the aquaculture industry to adopt. However, unless the GSFI widens its scope to include aquaculture standards, a similar board would need to be developed in the seafood industry to drive the initiative.
April 30, 2009
