More than 50% of all marine ingredients are certified by MarinTrust

MarinTrust reports that more than 50% of all marine ingredients produced worldwide are now certified under the MarinTrust program and the organization wants to raise the bar and achieve 75% certification, under evaluation or program improvement by 2025.

August 10, 2020

MarinTrust has just released its 2019-2020 report showing how it has been working with a wide range of stakeholders to develop its standards and gain recognition. Following the release of this report, Libby Woodhatch, MarinTrust CEO noted that “the past twelve months have been phenomenal - we've transitioned from IFFO RS to MarinTrust, gained full ISEAL membership and completed the new version of our Chain of Custody, which will be launched in a few days.”

Over the course of the past 12 months, the MarinTrust program received seven MarinTrust certified plants and six Chain of Custody certified sites. The MarinTrust program now covers 27 countries. More than 50% of all marine ingredients produced worldwide are now certified under the MarinTrust program and MarinTrust wants to raise the bar and achieve 75% certification, under evaluation or program improvement by 2025.

The program will soon include smart traceability features to keep up with the rapid changes in the market. The new version of the chain of custody will improve good manufacturing practices and social testing at the vessel level by the end of 2021. Additional developments, such as the development of multi-species criteria, have progressed since the launch of a pilot in 2018, whose objective was to evaluate the management of these very dynamic fisheries where current fishing standards cannot be fully applied.

A key area highlighted in the MarinTrust report has also been its ongoing work with other standard holders who share the same accountability goals in the fishing industry. Francisco Aldon, managing director of MarinTrust, explained that the “standards recognition is a process that involves the benchmarking of clauses and systems. MarinTrust has produced a set of procedures for the recognition of standards by MarinTrust, which has been tested against the MSC, GMP +, FEMAS and Chile's PAC. MarinTrust's relevance in the aquaculture value chain is on the rise as it is recognized by GAA, Global GAP and Aquaculture Stewardship Council's Best Aquaculture Practice (BAP) standards for feed production.”

Additionally, MarinTrust has been collaborating with Global Seafood Assurances (GSA) on its new social standard, the Responsible Fishing Vessel Standard (RFVS), and signed a memorandum of understanding with Peru's National Fisheries Society (SNP) in 2019.

Download the report here.