The Marine Stewardship Council’s (MSC) environmental certification and eco-labelling scheme is the first in the world to be fully consistent with the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) ‘Guidelines for the Eco-labelling of Fish and Fishery Products from Marine Capture Fisheries’.
“Credible fishery certification schemes are an important tool to help achieve the target of restoring depleted fisheries by 2015 set at the World Summit on Sustainable Development. The MSC has already achieved significant success, and full consistency with the FAO guidelines gives fisheries and the seafood industry an added reason to seek independent verification of sustainability through our programme,” says Will Martin, Chairman of the MSC's Board of Trustees.
The MSC's Chief Executive, Rupert Howes, adds: “For some fisheries, FAO consistency is the decisive argument for joining our certification programme. We expect a boost in participating fisheries and strongly increased visibility of the MSC eco-label on fish products.”
The FAO guidelines were adopted by the FAO member nations at a biannual meeting in March 2005 following two years of preparatory work. They are an internationally agreed set of procedural and substantive principles for operating credible fishery certification and eco-labelling schemes.
The MSC welcomed the FAO guidelines and announced its intention to come into full consistency shortly after they were adopted. The guidelines set the following principles for credible eco-labelling schemes:
- Objective, third-party fishery assessment utilising scientific evidence;
- Transparent processes with built-in stakeholder consultation and objection procedures;
- Standards based on the sustainability of target species, ecosystems and management practices.
While the MSC's programme matched the guidelines in almost all categories, two organisational areas needed refinement.
Firstly, the accreditation of certification bodies had to be separated from MSC's standard setting functions. The MSC has contracted with Accreditation Services International (ASI) based in Bonn, Germany, to undertake future authorisations of certifiers and to ensure they have the necessary know-how to conduct assessments according to the MSC standards. The MSC's decision to contract ASI was led by the company's long-standing expertise in accreditation for the Forest Stewardship Council – a scheme that operates in a similar way to the MSC.
Secondly, the objections process had to be independent of the certification programme and paid for by the objecting party. To meet this requirement, the MSC has appointed an independent Objections Panel Chair for a term of three years. The Chair will be responsible for implementing the MSC objections procedure. The first Objections Panel Chair will be Michael Lodge, an experienced lawyer with a strong background in the fields of public international law, law of the sea, the marine environment and human rights. Furthermore, the FAO Guidelines require objectors to pay the costs of the objections process. Previously these costs were covered by the MSC from charitable funding sources. However, the independent Objections Panel Chair does have the authority to waive all or a portion of these costs based on the objecting party's ability to pay.
With these changes firmly establishing FAO consistency, the MSC is in a strong position to engage more fisheries, processors and retailers, so consumers can choose from an even bigger range of MSC-labelled products in the future.
