The Marine Stewardship Council and Developing Countries - SEAFOOD Ecolabelling: Principles and Practice - page 289

is based on three principles, which are elaborated within a number of criteria
(MSC 2004a):
The status of the target fish stock
A fishery must be conducted in a manner that does not lead to over-fishing or depletion
of the exploited populations and, for those populations that are depleted, the fishery
must be conducted in a manner that demonstrably leads to their recovery.
Impact of the fishery on the ecosystem
Fishing operations should allow for the maintenance of the structure, productivity,
function and diversity of the ecosystem . . . on which the fishery depends.
Performance of the fishery management system
The fishery is subject to an effective management system that respects local, national
and international laws and standards and incorporates institutional and operational
frameworks that require use of the resource to be responsible and sustainable
At the catch level, certification is awarded to a 'fishery', not to individual op-
erators. Individual operators in the trade, processing and retail sectors can apply
for chain-of-custody certification and for the use of the MSC logo. Certification is
carried out by independent bodies that are accredited by the MSC Accreditation
Committee. The certification process starts with a confidential pre-assessment by
a certification body for a client or client group. Clients are usually associations of
fishing operators that catch and handle one or more species in a specific area. If
the results of the pre-assessment are such that the client decides to go ahead with
a full assessment, a certification body is selected and an expert assessment team
is appointed. This team develops performance indicators and scoring guideposts.
Stakeholders can at this point provide feedback on the suitability of these indicators.
The fishery is then scored by the expert team against these indicators to produce an
aggregated score for each of the three principles. Depending on the aggregate score
for each principle, a fishery can be rejected, certified with conditions that need to be
addressed within a certain period or certified with no conditions. Certified fisheries
are subject to annual audits. After 5 years, they need to be reassessed with a view
to possible re-certification (May et al . 2003, MSC 2004b).
14.2.2 Early criticism of MSC
The establishment of MSC's governance structure and the elaboration of its standard
drew a heated debate in fish industry circles in the second half of the 1990s. Much