The Global Aquaculture Alliance’s Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) third-party certification program has surpassed its 1,000 certified facility milestone, 12 years after the first set of BAP standards were introduced.
As of the end of November, 1,028 processing plants, farms, hatcheries and feed mills were BAP-certified - up from 701 BAP-certified facilities at the end of 2014.
In addition to those certified, 178 facilities have applied for BAP certification and are actively engaged in the BAP certification process.
“We’re proud of this BAP milestone, which is really an achievement of producers and marketplace endorsers,” said GAA president George Chamberlain. “The impact of this program goes far beyond the numbers themselves - it has led to industry-wide changes in attitudes and policies that are improving practices on a broad scale.”
Other highlights include:
Since the end of 2014, the number of BAP-certified farms has increased 56%, to 578 farms. The bulk of the growth in the number of BAP-certified farms came from shrimp and from salmon and trout. The number of BAP-certified salmon and trout farms doubled, to 268 farms at the end of November 2015, and the number of BAP-certified shrimp farms increased 34%, to 213 farms at the end of November 2015.
The number of BAP-certified hatcheries and feed mills totaled 81 and 54, respectively, at the end of November 2015, compared to 32 hatcheries and 27 feed mills at the end of 2014.
The annual output from BAP-certified processing plants totalled 1.86 million metric tons, with shrimp representing 627,394 metric tons, salmon and trout representing 96,955 metric tons, tilapia representing 248,141 metric tons and pangasius representing 96,955 metric tons.
