The new Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) standards for finfish and crustacean farms reached a landmark on Jan. 31 with the end of the 60-day public-comment period.
It’s expected that the new BAP farm standards will go live in the spring of 2013, following further technical scrutiny by the Standards Oversight Committee. Currently, the comments — which were received from fish farmers, academics and NGOs from Australasia, Asia, Europe and America — are being reviewed and will be published, along with the BAP responses and any changes to the standards, on the GAA website.
Logistics aside, the new BAP farm standards tackle the issue of social responsibly much more rigorously than the previous BAP farm standards, which were separately tailored for shrimp, salmon, tilapia, Pangasius and catfish. The new BAP farm standards apply to all types of production systems for finfish and crustaceans, excluding cage-raised salmonids, for which separate BAP farm standards exist.
Awareness of social responsibility — and the need to ensure that workers on farms and in processing plants are safe and treated fairly — has increased significantly in the decade since the first BAP farm standards for shrimp were created, said BAP Standards Coordinator Dan Lee.
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