April 23, 2007

UN to create standards for aquaculture

The United Nations is working to create a new international standard to certify the safety and harvesting of seafood.

Currently, aquaculture supplies almost half of all seafood eaten, thus questions on food safety and

environmental concerns have come to the fore, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said.

The aim is to come up with an overarching framework that can help standardise aquaculture certification schemes, Rohana Subasinghe of FAO's Fisheries and Aquaculture Department said.

A certification system used across the world could verify that seafood has been harvested in a way that is healthy, socially responsible and environmentally- conscious, he said, adding that the FAO is involved in such an effort.

Without one global standard, both consumers and producers would be confused as to which type of certification to trust and would in the end lose confidence in the system.

A standardised system would mean that the system is credible, trustworthy, and fair wherever they are applied, giving producers clear goals to achieve, the FAO said.