Less than two weeks after Haarlem, Netherlands-based Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative (GSSI) and Lond, U.K.-based MarinTrust announced a partnership, the two organizations have also announced alignment on certain benchmarking standards.
According to MarinTrust, it will now recognize some of the GSSI’s Global Benchmark Tool standards towards assessments for MarinTrust’s third-party certifications, allowing companies to streamline marine ingredient certification.
Specifically, standards meeting GGSI Global Benchmark Tool Version 2.0, Section D will now automatically meet pre-requisites under MarinTrust’s Whole Fish Fisheries Criteria Version 3.
"GSSI is the first benchmark tool MarinTrust recognizes in this way,” MarinTrust Assurance and Risk Manager Laura Courage said. “This fruitful collaboration will help reduce duplication, increase availability of approved raw material sources and ultimately increase the availability of certified marine ingredients.”
MarinTrust certifies marine feed ingredients, and while its MarinTrust Factory Standard is mainly aimed at marine ingredient production facilities, the assessment and approval of a species in a fishery is a prerequisite to obtaining certification to ensure the raw ingredients are coming from a responsible source.
“This recognition means applicants and certificate holders will not need to undergo two separate fishery assessments,” MarinTrust said. “Certified fisheries already recognised by GSSI will meet the MarinTrust pre-requisite, helping to avoid unnecessary duplication and supporting a streamlined certification journey. Additionally, individual standards formally recognised by GSSI will no longer need to go through a separate recognition process under MarinTrust.”
GSSI CEO Øyvind Ihle said the new alignment between the standards will aid the supply of certified fish and marine ingredients.
“Given that our frameworks are aligned, we’re making life easier for fisheries and supply chains – helping them maintain the highest standards of assurance while reducing duplication and complexity,” he said. “We’re pleased to see the GSSI Benchmark Framework serve as a trusted reference point (in sustainability assessments) to the benefit of this important sector."
