A collaboration memorandum of understanding (MOU) has been agreed by the Responsible Fisheries Management (RFM) certification programme and the Global Seafood Alliance (GSA), with the two groups looking to expand their global reach.
“It’s long been the goal of RFM to expand beyond Alaska, which we began with the development of a unified Chain of Custody standard with Iceland Responsible Fisheries in early 2022, followed by the certification of the Pacific whiting fishery in July of 2022. We believe GSA can assist RFM in realising marketing opportunities and introducing fisheries to the RFM programme,” said Mark Fina, Chairman of the Certified Seafood Collaborative, owner of the RFM Certification programme.
RFM hopes GSA’s relationships with retailers and foodservice companies worldwide will help it reach new markets and expand its network of chain-of-custody-certified companies.
Currently, GSA has global endorsers in North America, Latin America, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), Northeast Asia, South and Southeast Asia and Oceania. More than 3,000 facilities throughout the world are certified to Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) and Best Seafood Practices (BSP) standards.
For GSA, the new collaboration demonstrates its intention to support responsible certification in wild-capture fisheries from credible programmes benchmarked by the Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative (GSSI).
“This partnership will strengthen GSA’s mission of advancing responsible seafood practices while offering seafood producers more choice and the opportunity to reduce costs in the certifications they choose to pursue,” GSA CEO Brian Perkins said.
The Best Seafood Practices standards address “above the water” activities in the seafood supply chain, covering processing plants and fishing vessels. To reduce costs and simplify the process of certification, GSA does not intend to develop an additional wild fishery standard and instead incorporates wild-capture fishery management certification standards from GSSI-benchmarked schemes to enable full-chain BSP certification.
BSP is designed as an overarching programme endorsing existing GSSI-benchmarked fishery management standards, existing SSCI-benchmarked vessel standards, and GSA’s own Seafood Processing Standard that addresses food safety, social accountability, animal welfare, and environmental responsibility in seafood processing facilities.
As part of the MOU, RFM and GSA remain separate in ownership, communications, and funding.
Both organisations are committed to independence and will not require clients to use each other’s certification standards.
