Global Aquaculture Alliance Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP)

The GAA Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) facility certification standards defines the most important elements of responsible aquaculture and provides quantitative guidelines by which to evaluate adherence to those practices for processing plants, farms, hatcheries and feed mills. Fully accredited ISO 65.

Social – Processing plants and farms certified against the BAP standards must ensure a safe, healthy working environment. In total, the BAP processing plant standards contain 48 clauses related to worker safety, health and employee relations and intentionally address wages and other terms of employment and the use of child and forced labour. Took a stand against child labour and forced labour in the shrimp supply chain by prohibiting BAP-certified processing plants from outsourcing the processing of shrimp to third-party entities, from 1 January 2016.

Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) three-year study concludes with recommendations to further strengthen BAP social and labour standards and improve compliance (17 June 2021)
This focused on Indonesia, Vietnam and Chile and involved an analysis of audit results and in-depth interviews with employees throughout the seafood supply chain. Based on the study’s findings, the authors offered 11 recommendations on what BAP can do to further strengthen the BAP standards, to improve compliance, monitoring and remediation.

Significance for seafood businesses: 

A seafood-specific standard. Sourcing seafood that is accredited to a standard that has a social component provides reassurance that the seafood you are purchasing has been independently verified concerning social issues.

Note: 

• In April 2013 GAA signed a MOU with GlobalG.A.P. and ASC which includes collaborative working on social responsibility.
• In October 2014 GAA announced it was working collectively with IFFO, Lyons Seafoods Co., Wm Morrison Supermarkets, Tesco, Waitrose, M&J Seafood/Brakes Group and Direct Seafood to address the social concerns related to aquafeed production. 
• In April 2021 it was announced that the Global Seafood Alliance (GSA) was being formed by a merger of the Global Aquaculture Alliance and Global Seafood Assurances organisations. The new name reflects the merger and the non-profit organisation’s growing involvement in wild fisheries through the addition of the Seafood Processing Plant Standard (SPS) Issue 5.0 and the Responsible Fishing Vessel Standard (RFVS). 

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