True North salmon from Atlantic Canada and Maine is now certified to the Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) standards, allowing the company to offer three-star salmon. True North salmon is produced by Cooke Aquaculture Inc. — North America’s largest vertically integrated, independent salmon-farming company.
Cooke has attained three-star BAP certification for its processing operations, its Northeast Nutrition Inc. feed mill and several salmon farm sites — with plans to add more farm sites, the Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA) has announced.
The company will apply for four-star certification once GAA has finalized its BAP hatchery and nursery standards later this year. Cooke will also continue to seek BAP certification for additional farm sites.
“The BAP certification is a natural continuation of our company’s long-term commitment to quality seafood and responsible production,” said CEO Glenn Cooke. “A healthy marine environment is vital to our operations and certification through third parties ensures that we remain sustainable in our practices and helps us set goals for improvement. The BAP certification is well known and respected in the marketplace.”
Cooke has long been a believer in the importance of farming standards and the role of third-party audits, first achieving third-party certification in 2008. In 2012, Cooke’s Chilean operations, Salmones Cupquelan, achieved BAP certification. In Spain, Cooke’s sea bass and sea bream Company, Culmarex holds several third-party certifications including “Friend of the Sea” and “Ecologica,” an organic standard.
“We are extremely pleased to see the work and commitment put forward by Cooke Aquaculture,” said Peter Redmond, BAP’s VP of business development. “We are proud to include Cooke Aquaculture into the increasing fold of companies electing to certify their responsibly farmed seafood to the Best Aquaculture Practices standards.”
Operated by its Kelly Cove Salmon Ltd. division, the certified salmon farm sites are located New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Maine. The True North Salmon processing operations are located in St. George and Blacks Harbour, NB, Charlottetown, PEI, and Machiasport, Maine. The Northeast Nutrition feed mill is in Truro, Nova Scotia.
The company’s processing operations are also certified to the British Retail Consortium (BRC) Global Standard for Food Safety.
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 supply chain — farms, hatcheries, processing plants and feed mills — that assure healthful foods produced through environmentally and socially responsible means. BAP certification is based on independent audits that evaluate compliance with the BAP standards developed by the Global Aquaculture Alliance. For more information on BAP, visit www.gaalliance.org/bap.
About Cooke Aquaculture
Established in 1985 as Kelly Cove Salmon by Gifford, Michael and Glenn Cooke, the company now has salmon operations in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, Maine and Chile, sea bass and sea bream operations in Spain, and sales offices in Canada and the United States. Today, Cooke Aquaculture has more than 2,200 employees and processes and sells more than 160 million pounds of Atlantic salmon, 5 million pounds of trout and 20 million pounds of sea bass and sea bream annually. The company’s processing, sales and marketing division is True North Salmon Co., and its products are marketed under the True North Salmon and Jail Island Seafood brands. Salmones Cupquelan salmon is marketed under the Heritage Salmon brand.
For more information, please contact:
Steven Hedlund, Communications Manager, Global Aquaculture Alliance
steven.hedlund@gaalliance.org
+1-207-517-2191
Chuck Brown, Communications Manager, Cooke Aquaculture
chuck.brown@cookeaqua.com
+1-506-694-4909
Source: Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA)
