The decision of the Marine Stewardship Council’s (MSC) to stop the organisation’s existing wild capture fisheries certification and labelling programme to encompass seafood products from aquaculture, is not taken lightly. The MSC fully aware of importance of the aquaculture industry and of its overall contribution to the global seafood industry but after several discussions, several MSC stakeholders strongly believed that MSC should engage in aquaculture and had been expressing these views for a number of years.
On the other hand several fishery clients expressed their strong opinions that MSC should not involved in aquaculture fearing that such a move could undermine the value of MSC certification for wild capture fisheries. According to the Board the MSC should focus to delivering its core mission and objectives, which are scheduled to be rolled out later in 2008.
With the growth of MSC its wild capture prorgamme has also gained significant support from the industry and penetration of its labelled products into the market. And so the organization is receiving an increasing number of requests for the organisation to engage in aquaculture.
The Board said that it understands the preparation of standards that can be applied to aquaculture has progressed significantly and several organisations now actively engaged in the development and launch of aquaculture standards including WWF. Under this pressure the Board of MSC has agreed to commission detailed and comprehensive stakeholder analysis to review its decision and to ask if the MSC should seek to get involved in aquaculture certification.
