Certification frustration
Nicki Holmyard
As mussel farmers, we argue that our product is inherently sustainable and organic. the spat is naturally caught in abundance, is later thinned out to ensure optimum stocking density on the lines, the growing shellfish need no food or chemical input, and the production process results in little waste.
Farming mussels in the open sea, with plenty of space between each headline, also ensures that a plentiful supply of plankton can reach all of the growing crop.
Oyster and scallop farmers, whose spat starts off life in a hatchery, can argue the case in a similar way.
However, believing that something is sustainable and organic, and having paper proof that it is, are two different things. Whilst we can be sure that production methods in the UK are sound and the water quality is good, the same may not be true for shellfish grown elsewhere.
It is precisely this issue that has led to the rise in popularity of sustainability certification schemes for seafood. There is even a sustainability standard for seaweed.
The retail world in particular is keen on certification. It does a good job in helping to tick due diligence boxes for sourcing and supply, and in turn enables retailers to support their marketing messages.
Restaurants have been slower to demand proof of sustainability, preferring not to take on the additional costs of paying to use a logo licence, but instead, relying on the fact that customers will trust their judgement.
Merely stating ‘sustainably, locally, or ethically sourced’ on the menu is comfort for most customers, happy to pay a handsome price for a seafood meal with provenance, and I am sure that few people actually ask to see a restaurant’s sustainability supply policy, although I have done this on occasion. the trouble with this, is that restaurateurs can become lazy and often don’t train their staff well enough.
Many’s the time that my children, when they were young enough to be embarrassed by me, cringed as I asked pleasant but searching questions of waiters or supermarket fish counter staff, eager to get to the truth of the matter. And telling me that the oysters come from Japan, because they are Pacific oysters, that the salmon comes from ‘just down the road,’ because they got it from the local fishmonger, or that a fish is locally caught, when I know it is farmed, is just not on! I am not anti-fish farming, but I rail against being given misleading information. I may be in a small minority here, but I am sure I am not alone…
Which brings me back to certification. In the good old days, not long after we started mussel farming in Loch Etive, on the West Coast of Scotland, I was doing some work with the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). The MSC was set up to certify wild-caught seafood, but at that time, its board was strategically exploring whether the organisation’s reach could be expanded into aquaculture. In the early 1990s, fish and shellfish farming was slowly beginning to take off, but it was a bit of a Wild West scene.
I agreed to road-test MSC pre-certification on our rope grown mussels, got the other shellfish growers on the loch together, found some grant funding, and took responsibility for the inevitable paperwork mountain.
At the end of the process, the MSC board decided that our farmed product did not fit their remit, and that the organisation would not be expanding its wild capture certification and labelling programme to include aquaculture.
MSC looked at aquaculture again in 2008, when WWF was seeking an organisation to make operational, the standards that were resulting from its series of Aquaculture Dialogues. However, by a majority vote, the MSC board again reiterated its previous position, stating that ‘accelerating the
“
Believing that something is sustainable and organic, and having paper proof that it is, are things” two different
delivery of the MSC’s existing programme must remain the priority for its work.’
Their decision opened the way for a separate Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) to develop, but a great opportunity to have a unified and unitary approach to seafood certification for wild capture and aquaculture was lost.
As a result, both organisations now have certification schemes for mussels, along with several others, and the MSC gets around its former objections by classing them as an enhanced fishery. MSC has also gained the upper hand in certifying bottom grown and rope-grown mussel farms.
How to choose?
In the UK, farms supplying the Scottish Shellfish Marketing Group (SSMG) have MSC certification, Loch Fyne Oysters went for ASC certification, becoming the first blue mussel producer to achieve certification against the ASC bivalve standard in 2017, and our own farm became the first to gain Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) certification.
According to Cameron Brown, MD of loch Fyne Oysters, the company looked at several certification schemes, before deciding that the ASC bivalve standard was the most natural fit. It was also acceptable to a major retail customer they were hoping to woo.
‘ASC was appropriate for our rope farmed mussels; it looked at parameters such as how well we farm in a concentrated area, how good the water quality is, if there are any impacts on the seabed or the wider environment, and at the practical, social and community aspects of our operation,’ said Brown.
We decided to apply for BAP certification for one simple reason – it was the most cost effective for producers to buy into, and it ticks a box. It therefore satisfies our customers’ customers’ duty of care to source something that has been responsibly farmed. They were seeking reassurance, rather than a label to showcase.
BAP covers more than the effective fishery management and environmental concerns of the
MSC, by also including requirements on the community and social aspects of farming, food safety and traceability.
However, because it is more expensive for processors to achieve BAP certification, at least one major customer does not wish to take on that financial burden, so cannot label our mussels as BAP certified. They are already overwhelmed with MSC, BRC, ISo9001 etc audits, and are not prepared to incur additional costs to include another certification scheme to their offering.
When we were first certified, I had thought that we could trail-blaze, and interest everyone in taking BAP product, but I quickly became disillusioned, because the European market we sell into is simply not interested. Not yet anyway.
Instead, there is constant pressure on us to seek MSC certification instead, but I believe this is wrong on several counts.
Firstly it is very expensive, and secondly, it remains first and foremost a fisheries certification. Yes it is credible, yes retailers understand and accept it, and yes consumers are familiar with the blue tick logo, but still we resist.
As for organic, we applied for certification months ago with the Soil Association, but Covid-19 has got in the way and first audits cannot be done remotely. When (hopefully) we achieve it, nothing will have changed, our practices will be the same, and the mussels will look and taste the same, but somewhere, a consumer will feel differently about them because they have a label.
Perhaps at the end of the day, it is just the feel-good factor that counts!