At their 2007 annual Conference in Sydney, the Board of IFFO (International Fish meal and Fish oil Organisation) decided to start developing a new business tool which would allow members to demonstrate the responsible practices behind the manufacture of their products.
The scheme will be voluntary,
although it is hoped that most members will see the value of joining up, and
compliance will require to be audited by a third-party, often in conjunction
with a HACCP audit (HACCP compliance will be part of CORP). The company will
need to show that its facilities are managed to ensure that there is no
possibility of accidental or deliberate contamination of the products, that the
raw materials are from managed fisheries (with Governments complying with the
FAO Code of Responsible Fishing) and that no illegal or unreported fish were
used.
IFFO staff are now working on drawing up the details of the code
and we will be consulting with stakeholders in the value-chain to ensure that
this will prove a useful initiative to all in the value-chain. The intention is
not to develop an eco-label in competition with others which already exist in
the market place, but a business-to-business tool to reassure users that the
products are responsibly and carefully produced. In turn this should allow IFFO
members to differentiate their products from those produced in facilities which
do not have the necessary control measures in place.
The intention is to
develop the code over the next few months with the hope of having everything
ready for final Board approval at the 2008 October Conference in San
Diego.
Related website:
IFFO