Developing standards to address these impacts is a top priority agreed on by key players in aquaculture, including the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), World Bank and WWF.

In its comments about the draft shrimp standards, submitted to GlobalG.A.P. this week, WWF also said that the standards would not be credible, because they would not be measurable and would be managed by GlobalG.A.P. instead of an independent and credible third party.

GlobalG.A.P is a private sector body composed of European retailers that sets standards for the certification of agriculture products. WWF also noted that the standards would not be finalised based on consensus from multiple stakeholders.

For similar reasons, WWF also is concerned about standards being developed by Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA), an industry trade association funded by the shrimp industry. GAA is developing practices for shrimp farmers which they propose as standards. The GAA standards are not being created through a transparent, consensus building process and they are going to be managed by the Aquaculture Certification Council, which is affiliated with GAA and not a neutral third party entity.

“To be accepted by consumers and the public as a whole, the standards need to be independently verifiable,” said Jose Villalon, director of the Aquaculture Programme at WWF, an organisation that has helped develop a wide range of standards and certification programmes. “The standards cannot be created by industry for industry. Also, any standards developed for aquaculture need to address the market demand for farmed fish that is raised, without harming the environment or the people working at aquaculture facilities.”

WWF is said to be the catalyst for a series of species-specific roundtables, called the Aquaculture Dialogues, that consist of multiple stakeholders who are developing standards for certifying 10 aquaculture products: shrimp, tilapia, pangasius, salmon, trout and five types of molluscs. The majority of the standards are expected to be finalised in the next 18 months. Once developed, the standards will be given to a new or existing third party certification entity to manage – an essential move to ensure success, given that conflicts of interest or the perception of conflicts don’t exist when a third party entity is involved.

The Aquaculture Dialogue standards also will minimise or reduce the key environmental and social impacts associated with aquaculture. For shrimp, this includes impacts addressed through the “International Principles for Responsible Shrimp Farming,” which were adopted by FAO in 2006 and based on discussions at 140 meetings with more than 8,000 people and information in 40 case studies written by 120 researchers. The principles were created by the Consortium on Shrimp Farming and Environment, a group that includes WWF, FAO, World Bank, United Nations Environmental Programme and Network of Aquaculture Centres of Asia Pacific.

www.fishupdate.com is published by Special Publications. Special Publications also publish FISHupdate magazine, Fish Farmer, the Fish Industry Yearbook, the Scottish Seafood Processors Federation Diary, the Fish Farmer Handbook and a range of wallplanners.

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