First European Mussel Farm Earns BAP Certification
Offshore Shellfish Ltd., which operates the United Kingdom’s first large-scale, offshore rope-cultured mussel farm, recently obtained Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) certification, the Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA) announced in early September. It is the first mussel farm in Europe to earn this distinction.
Offshore Shellfish is a family-run business that grows the native blue mussel offshore in the waters of Lyme Bay, South Devon.
“We are very proud to have achieved the high standard required for BAP certification, and it is a testament to the dedicated and conscientious work of our crews at sea, the management team onshore and the environmental research team at Plymouth University. We believe that BAP certification will help us to project recognition of the highly sustainable nature of farming mussels in the challenging offshore environment,” said John Holmyard, founder of Offshore Shellfish.
Added Mike Berthet, BAP market development manager for Europe, “I was delighted to be able to present to Nicki and John Holmyard the very first certificate for a BAP-certified mussel farm here in the EU even though it was nearly 6 kilometres out into the English Channel. It’s a truly great achievement on many levels.”
Administered by GAA, BAP is the world’s most comprehensive third-party aquaculture certification program, with standards encompassing environmental responsibility, social responsibility, food safety, animal health and welfare, and traceability. The BAP program covers the entire aquaculture production chain — processing plants, hatcheries, farms and feed mills. Through the first eight months of 2018 , there were 2,082 BAP-certified processing plants worldwide.
About BAP
A division of the Global Aquaculture Alliance, Best Aquaculture Practices is an international certification program based on achievable, science-based and continuously improved performance standards for the entire aquaculture supply chain — farms, hatcheries, processing plants and feed mills — that assure healthful foods produced through environmentally and socially responsible means. BAP certification is based on independent audits that evaluate compliance with the BAP standards developed by the Global Aquaculture Alliance.
