American seafood supplier National Fish & Seafood has announced that is launching a project to bring small-scale shrimp farmers closer to Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) certification.
As certification can be very costly to small scale farmers, the idea of this project is to introduce ‘group’ certification, to make it feasible for small farms to become certified to the globally recognised standard.
With the support of the GAA, NFS will pilot the first four groups in three countries: Vietnam, Indonesia, and India. Groups will consist of between 20 - 50 farms practicing similar culture methods and located within the same geographic region and will be formed into a single entity. Within each group will be a Facility Group Manger (FGM) who will oversee the compliance of each farm with the BAP standard and will implement a Quality Management System which describes farm protocols and records inputs and outputs. This system will provide the traceability and transparency needed to conduct a desktop audit prior to the dispatch of an auditor who will only audit a sample of the farms, hence the savings in the costs of the program.
The AIP will bring together all stakeholders: farmers, processor, importer, and local government to determine the carrying capacity of the given region and develop policies towards sustainable development of the shrimp farming industry.
“We are very excited with this collaboration. It is great to see the whole supply chain working together to get the job done and deliver meaningful change on the ground, while delivering more two-star BAP shrimp to the marketplace,” said Peter Redmond, BAP’s VP of market development.
