East Coast Seafood achieves new BAP standard

THREE seafood production facilities in the US have become the first to be certified to the new Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) Chain of Custody (CoC) Standard.

East Coast Seafood has successfully certified three of its facilities — Seatrade in New Bedford and Lakeville, Massachusetts, as well as Maine Fair Trade in Prospect Harbour, Maine.

The new standard allows facilities that re-pack or re-label farmraised seafood products from BAP-certified processors or re-processors to maintain traceability and ensure integrity of the BAP star status. A CoC facility may carry forward the BAP logo from a BAP-certified processor or re-processor.

“BAP is very well recognised and respected by most major food retailers and distributors across the United States and Canada, and this certification puts East Coast Seafood in an exclusive club of North American companies that can re-pack BAP products for our customers,” said Bob Blais, senior vice president of East Coast Seafood. “We thank Global Aquacultural Alliance for working with East Coast Seafood to develop this programme.”

“The new BAP Chain of Custody Standard is still in pilot phase and has not yet begun its accreditation or benchmarking process,” said Greg Brown, SVP operations and strategic development for BAP. “We are also finishing the development of alternative criteria for the food safety, social accountability and environment responsibility pre-requisites. So it is GAA’s hope to finalise the CoC Standard by the end of this year.”

The BAP CoC Standard was created to support BAP market endorsers along with BAP supply and production chains to allow for the re-packing and re-labelling of BAP certified products while assuring BAP logo use integrity.This standard will allow for increased BAP presence in the market by offering a certification option for cold storage, third party re-packing and/or re-labelling facilities and distribution partners in BAP seafood supply chains.

The BAP program is based on independent audits that evaluate compliance with the BAP standards developed by

GAA.