The Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA) is pleased to announce that China’s Deyan Aquatic Products & Food Co. Ltd. is the world’s first company eligible to offer two-star Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) crayfish.
Deyan earned the distinction when two of its processing plants, and two of its farms attained BAP certification in the spring, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Deyan is located in central China’s Hubei province, an area hard hit by COVID-19. Once local travel restrictions were lifted and risks were assessed, audits were conducted, and the facilities passed the audits with 100 percent compliance, as required by the BAP third-party certification program.
Founded in 1994, Deyan is one of China’s leading crayfish, also known as crawfish, and catfish producers, with about 2,000 hectares of company-owned farms, and about 200,000 metric tons of annual processing capacity. The company is also eligible to offer three-star BAP catfish. One notable development is that Deyan’s online sales in domestic market enjoyed a 415 percent increase through the e-commerce platform JD.com from January to May this year.
UK-based The Big Prawn Company is among the global companies that sources crayfish from Deyan. “Big Prawn have been supporting a number of crayfish improvement projects in China for the last five years and has more recently worked with GAA on this initiative over the last two years. We have accompanied GAA in China, carried out pre-assessments with GAA and worked with our suppliers to support certification,” said Will Rash, managing director of Big Prawn. “We are delighted that our support has helped to achieve the first certified crayfish in China with two-star BAP, and we will continue to support further certification of crayfish in China. Crayfish is an iconic ingredient, and we look forward to developing this recognition in the UK for the retail and sandwich sectors.”
BAP is the world’s largest and most comprehensive third-party aquaculture certification program, with standards encompassing environmental responsibility, social accountability, food safety, and animal health and welfare.
About BAP
A division of the Global Aquaculture Alliance, Best Aquaculture Practices is an international certification program based on achievable, science-based and continuously improved performance standards for the entire aquaculture production chain – including processing plants, farms, hatcheries and feed mills. BAP standards cover environmental responsibility, social accountability, food safety and animal welfare. The BAP program is based on independent audits that evaluate compliance with the BAP standards developed by GAA.
