FAO Guidelines for Ecolabelling in Wild-Capture Fisheries - SEAFOOD Ecolabelling: Principles and Practice - page 76

inland fisheries expert group added fishing communities and hatchery managers to
this list of interested parties.
An innovative feature is the requirement that in developing or revising a standard,
an appropriate procedure should be put in place to validate the standard with respect
to the minimum requirements for sustainable fisheries as laid out in the guidelines.
There is also a call for standards to not encompass criteria or requirements that
are of no relevance for sustainable fisheries or could cause unnecessary barriers to
trade or mislead the consumer (paragraph 63).
Guidelines for accreditation
The purpose of accreditation is to provide assurance that certification bodies re-
sponsible for conducting conformity assessments with sustainability standards and
chain-of-custody requirements are competent to carry out such tasks. The guide-
lines lay down the requirements for accreditation organisations to perform this
task professionally in a transparent, impartial, independent and accountable fash-
ion. The primary normative basis is the ISO Guide 61, General Requirements for
Assessment and Accreditation of Certification/Registration Bodies, 1996.
The conditions for maintaining, extending, suspending and withdrawal of ac-
creditation are also spelled out in the guidelines as is the responsibility of the
accreditation body in relation to the use of accreditation marks, symbols and logos
and how to prevent their misleading use in advertisements, etc.
Past experience with ecolabelling schemes points to the importance of having
solid procedures to address and resolve complaints in an impartial and independent
manner. In this regard, the guidelines spell out the need for the establishment of
an impartial and independent committee which in the first instance should attempt
to resolve any complaints through discussion or conciliation and if this fails, in
the second instance provide a written ruling to the accreditation body and the
parties concerned (paragraph 83). The guidelines, however, explicitly state that this
provision would not exclude recourse to other forms of legal and administrative
processes as provided for in national legislation or international law (paragraph 86).
Guidelines for certification
Certification is an integral and indispensable part of any ecolabelling scheme. In
respect to fisheries ecolabelling schemes, it provides assurance to buyers and con-
sumers that a certain fish or fishery product comes from a fishery that conforms
to the established standard for a sustainable fishery. In keeping with the princi-
ples, impartial certification based on an objective assessment of all relevant factors
ensures that ecolabels convey truthful information. This is a necessary condition
for the ecolabelling scheme to attain its objectives.
The guidelines provide for two types of certification, certification of the fishery
itself, including the production of stocking material in the case of inland fisheries,