Harvest Select Catfish is the world’s first catfish producer to receive Best Aquaculture Practice (BAP) certification for its farms and processing plants, the Uniontown, Ala., company announced on Monday.
The BAP standards were developed by the Global Aquaculture Alliance to ensure seafood, including catfish, tilapia and shrimp, is farmed in an environmentally and socially responsible manner. The Aquaculture Certification Council implements the BAP standards through third-party auditors who conduct site inspections, effluent sampling and extensive procedural and record reviews.
“This certification is important for a variety of reasons: First, how important it is for our customers to know that they are purchasing catfish products from facilities certified for meeting criteria that defines food safety and environmental/social responsibility,” says Randy Rhodes, president of Harvest Select. “This is another aspect of our quality story — from the very finest fingerlings to our processing to our packaging — that defines Harvest Select. We want our customers to be completely confident that when they purchase a Harvest Select product they’re purchasing the best catfish in the marketplace.
“Second, it’s important that our employees are recognized and rewarded for their efforts in making this certification happen. They have worked tirelessly to upgrade our entire operation so that it meets — and, more often than not, exceeds — customer expectations,” add Rhodes.
Harvest Select operates numerous catfish farms in Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas and processes more than 800,000 pounds of fish per week at plants in Uniontown and Eudora, Ark. Founded by five Alabama catfish farmers in 1991, the company is now privately owned by a group of Alabama investors.
