Irish Fishing Vessels enter the Irish Seafood Stewardship Scheme (Date:23 December 2011)
Irish Fishing Vessels enter the Irish Seafood Stewardship Scheme
The State Agency, Bord Iascaigh Mhara, commonly known as BIM – the Sea Fisheries Board have been leading the development of credible seafood certification for over 14 years. Since the mid-90’s BIM have been developing Codes of Best Practice and Environmental Codes for seafood producers across both aquaculture and fisheries.
In tandem with this, Global Trust has provided standards know-how and certification expertise to BIM in the development of credible, third party accredited certification programmes for seafoods including; farmed salmon, wild salmon, trout, mussels, oysters, whitefish, nephrops, herring, mackerel and brown crab. Over the last 2 years, this engagement has led to the development of the BIM Seafood Stewardship Scheme, focused on responsible vessel practices, provenance and care of the catch.
The Standards have been developed on multiple references and considerable state, stakeholder and industry input. Global Trust is now actively assessing applicant vessels from just about all fishing ports in Ireland. Clare Murray, Global Trust's fishing operations expert says we are getting interest from all types of vessel from the pelagic RSW fleet, the vivier crabbers and the polyvalent vessels operating across a range of fisheries such as groundfish, nephrops and brown crab. This is a very exciting development for Global Trust said Peter Marshall, MD and combined with our UK Responsible Fisheries Scheme demonstrates that Global Trust is about supporting common sense, practical certification solutions for seafood businesses both here and internationally. We believe fisheries, markets and stakeholders require options to express their own and the market preferences for responsible practice.