Developing an International Standard for the Trade in Live Reef Food Fish - SEAFOOD Ecolabelling: Principles and Practice - page 180

8.6 Implementing the standard

8.6.1 Compliance

During the standards development process, concerns were raised that operators and
agencies in source countries may hold themselves up as being compliant under an
internationally developed 'code', on the basis of meeting certain principles when
in fact overall, the basic nature and operation of the fishery remained unchanged.
This led to improvements in the Standards structure to reflect the holistic nature of
the Standard and the obligation for operators and agencies in source countries to
adhere to a stepwise process as opposed to piecemeal compliance with some but
not all principles (e.g. a demonstration of compliance with principles in the section
on Fishing Operations means little without achieving fishery viability, monitoring
and management compliance).
Further, there is a need to account for the interaction between agents as the prod-
uct moves along the supply chain. Within the natural resource sector, the 'chain
of custody' approach to compliance is essential to dealing with the need to satisfy
multi-agent criteria. This aspect of ensuring the 'sustainability' of LRFF along the
supply chain was not specifically addressed during the standards development pro-
cess, nor was there developed a mechanism for measuring compliance or what might
be considered an acceptable level of compliance (i.e. the benchmarking-specific
requirements). Options to facilitate assessment of compliance were considered, in-
cluding the establishment of a 'trade organisation' to decide on these issues, and
partnering with existing compliance bodies (e.g. MSC and MAC).

8.6.2 Implementation frameworks

As previously noted, the purpose of the LRFFT project was to produce a credible and
robust International Standard for the Trade in Live Reef Food Fish. Subsequently,
the project team reviewed and considered options for the implementation and use
of the LRFFT Standard and possible frameworks under which the LRFFT standard
could be used. These included self-declaration by industry members to the LRFFT
standard (sometimes known as first-party certification; see Chapter 1); compliance
to the LRFFT Standard within a programme operated by a LRFFT trade association
(sometimes known as second-party certification); and conventional third-party cer-
tification. While the preferred method of ensuring compliance and implementation
of the Standard for the LRFFT would be an independent third-party certification
programme, the prospect of introducing such a certification programme into the
LRFFT would be challenging.
The unique characteristics of the LRFFT as a tropical small-scale fishery (dis-
cussed above) create significant difficulties for implementing a third-party certi-
fication system (Pauly 1997). In addition, the limited institutional and financial
capacity to undertake resource assessment and monitoring to manage the fishery,