Comments sought on updated Salmon Farm Standard
Comments are being invited on the latest issue of the Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) Salmon Farm Standard.
Issue 3.0 of the BAP Standard has been released for a public comment period, with responses invited by 5 May.
The new version of this widely used standard includes measures to improve diver safety, a range of requirements to promote better fish welfare and a new metric to show how dependent a farm’s feed regime is on forage fish.
Issue 3.0 has been modified from the previous Issue 2.4 to expand the overall comprehensiveness of the audit. The most significant changes were made to the sections addressing social responsibility, wildlife and predator interactions, animal health and welfare, and biosecurity and disease management.
Specifically, changes that were made include:
- Updated procedures for safe diving, response to diver emergencies, requirements for diver training and certification.
- Adoption of forage fish dependency ratio (FFDR) as a metric
- Stronger requirements for protection of predator species and endangered, threatened, and protected species
- More emphasis on the use and documentation of operational welfare indicators
- Updated requirements for humane harvest / slaughter (with SOPs for slaughter, etc.)
- More requirements for biosecurity and fish welfare during transport or crowding
The GSA has stressed that all properly submitted comments, and the GSA’s response, will be public, however, the authors will be anonymous.
The draft of the Salmon Farm Standard is available on the BAP website here. To comment, download the public comment form here and submit the form to GSA Standards Coordinator David Dietz at David.Dietz@globalseafood.org.
