Boost for responsibly-sourced feed ingredients
Nearly 45% of the global output of fishmeal and fish oil – from 118 marine ingredients-producing factories, across 16 countries – will be certified to the IFFO’s Responsible Supply (RS) Standard by the end of the year.
Morocco is the latest country to join the IFFO's programme, strengthening the African presence of RS – which is recognised as a credible standard for responsible sourcing and production of marine ingredients by GAA Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC). It is expected that the production of compliant certified IFFO RS material will continue to increase over the years, and the development of version 2.0 of the standard should help this.
To ensure the standard remains ahead of the curve, the IFFO RS Governance Board (GB) recently decided to carry out a full strategy review during the course of 2017, involving a wide-ranging consultation of stakeholders, including industry and NGOs. The purpose of this review is to agree a strategy up to 2025. The IFFO RS GB has also decided to continue with the implementation of all the ISEAL codes into the IFFO RS Certification Programme, but has decided to put the membership application process on standby as the final application will depend on the outcome of the proposed strategic review.
The development of the IFFO RS V2.0 Standard has been carried out in two parts. The revised fishery criteria and proposed new assessment methodology (excluding mixed trawl fishery criteria) were opened up for a 30-day public consultation in August 2016. The factory audit criteria are under development and the aim is for the first full draft of the Standard (excluding mixed trawl fishery criteria) to be ready and opened for a 60-day public consultation period from January 2017. The intention is to have this new version ready to be launched in June/July 2017, with a period of implementation of approximately 12 months for existing IFFO RS certificate holders. The mixed trawl fishery section of the fisheries assessment will be included in the new version by the end of 2017.
The 60-day public consultation period will start on 16th January and run until 17th March. All the necessary information and templates to use for the consultation will be available on the IFFO RS website.
