Marine Harvest Canada has successfully completed a pilot of the Best Aquaculture Practices’ (BAP) new group farm programme, resulting in 11 of its salmon farm sites attaining BAP certification.
Located along the vast British Columbia coastline, the farm sites are the first set of sites to earn BAP certification under the group farm programme, said the Global Aquaculture Alliance.
“In order to meet the group certification, BAP and our third-party auditors need to be confident that Marine Harvest farms are consistently operating at a level that exceeds standard requirements,” said Marine Harvest Canada certification manager, Katherine Dolmage.
The BAP group farm approach allows for a reduced number of site audits; a subset of the total number of sites is audited. The sites receive one BAP certificate. The ability to qualify for group and to have a subset of farms audited requires an applicant to implement strict and consistent internal controls across all of its operations, including a procedure to remove non-compliant sites.
Lisa Goche, BAP VP, said: “A key element to ensuring the integrity and auditability of new programs such as this is the ability to ‘pilot’ test them in the field.”
“BAP is grateful to Marine Harvest Canada, which graciously volunteered to participate in a group pilot against the BAP salmon farm standards. Its cooperation has really helped us to fine tune and improve the programme.”
A division of the Global Aquaculture Alliance, Best Aquaculture Practices is an international certification programme based on achievable, science-based and continuously improved global performance standards for the entire aquaculture supply chain.
