Ecolabelling of Seafood: The Basic Concepts - SEAFOOD Ecolabelling: Principles and Practice - page 14

Iceland, which makes significant investments to guarantee that the fish popula-
tions in its waters are well managed. For example, cod from Iceland are caught
with line and hook. Albert Heijn contributes to better salmon-farming methods
by having all its suppliers certified according to GLOBALGAP (see Chapter 6).
The company also sells MSC-certified Alaska pollock fish fingers and MSC-
certified sole.
By working with preferred suppliers that demonstrate a commitment to these
priorities, Ahold knows where the fish comes from and how harvesting affects
the environment. Ahold intends to exert a proactive and constructive influence
on the seafood industry, to continually make incremental improvements and to
help their suppliers to do the same.
From www.ahold.com.
Second-party certification systems typically adopt an industry-wide standard and
criteria, with assessment procedures that may be either internal or independent, but
are restricted to assessment of compliance of the venture or group of ventures
with the industry-set standard. The owner of the standard (typically an industry
association, a group of companies or sometimes a government) will determine
the standard and the criteria, and arrange for (usually) independent assessments
of compliance with the standard. These assessments are not often made public,
and although the standard and criteria may be publicly available, the verification
process for individual products may not be freely available. As with first-party
systems, the standard and criteria in second-party systems may be established so
that the majority of the members of the group that owns the standard will comply,
for the same (usually commercial) reasons as in first-party systems.
The assessment system operated by the Australian government for assess-
ment and accreditation of export fisheries (http://www.environment.gov.au/coasts/
fisheries/publications/guidelines.html) is an example of a second-party certifica-
tion system (Box 1.2). In this system, the assessment process has been developed
with broad consultation and is widely available, and the standard has been recently
upgraded (2007) to be more available for public scrutiny, but the verification of
compliance is a self-assessment process.
Box 1.2 Guidelines for the Ecologically Sustainable Management of Fish-
eries in Australia
To satisfy the Australian Commonwealth Government requirements for a demon-
strably ecologically sustainable fishery, the fishery or fisheries (if a species is
caught in more than one fishery), must operate under a management regime
that meets Principles 1 and 2. The management regime must take into account