WWW.WA S .ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • DECEMBER 2022 57 some non-conformances. These were mostly related to documentation and recordkeeping but they needed to be closed out to fully conform to the Canadian standard. To this end, NAIA led the development of comprehensive documentation and recordkeeping systems for the mussel farming companies. This included documents such as Organic Plans, Wildlife and Environment Management Policies, shipping agreements, processing agreements, as well as template records for all aspects of production (including larval monitoring, seed collection, harvest and processing) and all environmental aspects of the operations. The implementation component also included the coordination and scheduling of synchronized audits for the mussel sector such that audit costs were minimized. Because there are no certification bodies located in Newfoundland and Labrador, auditors must fly in for audits. To save costs related to flights and auditor travel time, we worked with one certification body (CB) to schedule audits such that an auditor would fly in and audit all companies to both Organic and BAP in a single three-week period. As all companies were using the same documentation and recordkeeping templates for organic, auditors knew what to expect from one company to the next and audits were efficient and timely. To round out our certification preparedness work, in 2013 NAIA took up the charge in promoting the newly certified organic blue mussels. Our award-winning “Raised Naturally” promotion campaign with the tag line “The Only Certified Blue Mussels in North America” was run in magazines such as FSR Magazine and enRoute Magazine. We also created bluemussels.com, a website offering information on organic blue mussels, the organic standard, mussel recipes, cooking videos, supplier contacts and much more. As a direct result of NAIA’s work on certification preparedness, all NAIA mussel farming member companies have their production certified as organic. In fact, Newfoundland and Labrador offered the first certified organic mussels in North America and had the world’s first Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) certified mussel processing plant (Norlantic Processors Ltd.). The project gave the local staff of our member salmonid companies a familiarity with standards and certification which helped support their companies’ efforts to secure certification to standards such as BAP. NAIA salmon member companies now have BAP four-star certification, BAP’s highest designation, meaning that their feed mills, hatcheries, farms and processing plants all meet the BAP standards. Cooke Aquaculture was the first salmon company certified under the BAP Two-Year Group Audit program and Northern Harvest Sea Farms (nowMowi Canada East) was the first salmon company to obtain BAP FourStar status. British Retail Consortium and Canadian Organic Aquaculture. The workshops also thoroughly covered the steps involved in the implementation of a certification program, including document control, internal and third-party audits, and non-conformance close-out. Following the workshops, the benchmarking component offered our companies further certification preparedness through provision of openstyle operational (on-site) audits for farming and processing operations to the standard of their choosing. Each of the mussel farming companies chose to be audited to the Canadian Organic Aquaculture Standard (CAN/CGSB 32.312-2012), which was just about to be published at the time. Mussel processors and salmonid processors were audited to the BAP processing standard and salmonid farms were audited to either BAP or GlobalG.A.P. Again, Global Trust helped us deliver this component by carrying out the audits and providing each company with a comprehensive report on possible non-conformances and suggestions on closeout. This benchmarking exercise armed the companies’ personnel with the knowledge and the confidence that they needed going into their first audits. The next component in our comprehensive certification readiness initiative was the certification program implementation phase. Because our finfish companies and processing companies were already well on their way towards implementing their certification programs, NAIA concentrated its efforts on assisting the mussel farming sector (Side Bar 1). Because certification preparedness was one of our key strategic priorities, NAIA wanted to further enhance our technical capabilities in this regard, before starting the implementation component. Already well versed in standards interpretation, the NAIA Research and Development Coordinator underwent a program of supplemental training in certification, auditing and quality management systems to be able to serve NAIA members as the technical support person for compliance and certification. This training included certificates in Internal Auditing and in Implementing Environmental Management Systems (ISO 14001), as well as courses in Quality Management Plans (QMP) and Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) systems. The implementation phase began with organizing the mussel sector. Through a series of NAIA-led meeting, the mussel farming and processing companies used their strategic marketing objectives to decide on an approach for implementing product certification. Two of the mussel processing companies decided to pursue Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) certification although Canadian Organic was seen as the best fit for the farms from a marketing and ease of implementation point of view. Rope-cultured blue mussels are a natural product and the production of mussels in Newfoundland and Labrador was being done in a fashion that already conformed to organic principles, but the results of benchmarking audits showed ( C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 5 8 ) Canada’s organic standard for aquaculture is an official standard of Canada and is legislated under the Safe Foods for Canadians Act. First published in 2012 as a voluntary standard, the current iteration of the standard, Organic Production Systems: Aquaculture (CAN / CGSB 32.312 – 2018), outlines principles and approaches for organic aquaculture production which align with concepts of ecosystemhealth and sustainable and environmentfriendly production. All NAIAmussel farming member companies have their production certified as organic under this standard.
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