Marine Harvest Chile has completed the Best Aquaculture Practices’ (BAP) new multi-site zone cluster program, resulting in nine of its salmon farm sites and two processing plants attaining BAP certification.
The Global Aquaculture Alliance announced the achievement in early February and the Chilean farms are the first to complete the program.
Gianfranco Nattero, Marine Harvest’s managing director of sales and marketing in the Americas, said: “We are proud to achieve three-star BAP for our operations in Chile, which confirms the high standards of our operations, our commitment towards sustainability and our engagement with our customers.”
BAP considers the multi-site zone cluster program an ideal fit for Chile’s salmon and mussel facilities, thanks to biosecurity measures implemented by Chile’s regulatory authorities.
The program allows an applicant with multiple farm sites in a federally set zone, known as a ‘barrio’ or neighbourhood, to apply for BAP certification for more than one site at a time. In addition to multi-site zone clusters, farms can also be certified as a group.
Peter Redmond, vice president of BAP’s market development, said: “We are extremely pleased that Marine Harvest Chile achieved BAP certification with two processing plants and nine farms, which is demonstrating real change on the water.”
“The new group and multi-site zone cluster programs finally allow for multiple farms to apply for certification at one time rather than one farm at a time which can be costly and, in a lot of cases, unnecessary,” he added.
