GAA's BAP: Food Safety and Sustainability

Global Aquaculture Alliance's Best Aquaculture Practices standard is a rather unique standard covering Food Safety, Environmental Sustainability and Social concerns. It has been GFSI benchmarked but I find it has been largely ignored a as a Food Safety standard but more so as a Sustainability in the league with MSC (Marine Stewardship Council) in the case of Farmed vs. Wild Sustainability.

With the growing aquaculture industry (globally now eclipsing beef production), I thought perhaps it would gain more in popularity having to do with the many of the standards unique challenges.

Any thoughts or feedback?  Personally, I am interested in what people find as the most challenging when deploying it (on the Farm or Processing level).  

Cheers,

-B

So nobody is dealing with BAP as a GFSI benchmarked Food Safety audit?

...anybody.... anybody... Bueller?

Well, BAP (Best Aquaculture Practices) as a GFSI benchmark will not be going away. It IS a food safety standard as well as a Sourcing Sustainability standard... whatever "Sustainability" is (ecological, labor practices, environmental, corporate responsibility, etc). This makes it a quite unique standard, but our concern are not these "sustainability" criteria, ours is Food Safety...

Of the total audit questions = 290

• Regulation management – 6 audit questions
• Quality management systems – 44 audit questions
• Management and training – 12 audit questions
• Food safety  - 111 questions
• Verification and testing – 30 questions
•  Traceability questions – 31 questions

Food safety and traceability coverage is 49%

GFSI Coverage is 81%

BAP's Product Testing is in this category testing for Antibiotics & Chemicals in the supply chain from Feed, Hatchery, Farm to Processor. This is unique to any standard that I know, and as it is a GFSI benchmark and aquaculture is growing exponentially, it is not going away as customer concern for Farm/Field to Fork increases.

So, if anybody has involvement with this standard, lets be proactive and start addressing it. Simon? Can we get another "Food Safety Standards Forums" category made for BAP?

Cheers,

-B

We are currently an SQF level 3 certified processing facility and are working with our suppliers to attain BAP certification.  More and more retailers are becoming interested in this standard and the fact that it addresses GFSI benchmarks and sustainability is fantastic!  

GAA have done a good job educating retailers to their "Star" system:

BAP 1* - Processing

BAP 2* - Farm plus above

BAP 3* - Hatchery plus above

BAP 4* - Feed Mill plus above

Whereas they don't seem to have a clue what the differences are between SQF level 2, or level 3 and thereby do not see market benefits from level 3.

Bacon, yes the testing in BAP is really geared more toward drug residue than bacteria.  The food safety purists on this board will probably be troubled by that, but you have to remember it is a standard that is for Aquiculture.  In fresh fish, drug residues are our biggest hazard.... there are much fewer bacterial hazards in fresh fish than most processed food.  Processing in our case, means cutting and putting on ice.

Simon, I saw a heading for BAP discussion but cannot add posts.  Can we move this discussion over?

thanks, Susan

Hi Susan, discussion moved over and permission to add topics should now be available.

Thanks for pointing it out.

Regards,

Simon