SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton — March 31 2014 — The MSC has carried out a compliance audit to investigate the integrity of the Russian pollock fishery supply chain, both prior and after certification. The Sea of Okhotsk pollock fishery received certification in Sept. 2013. Prior to that there had been reports of companies buying certified Alaska pollock and mixing it with uncertified Russian pollock, and then offering customers low priced 'MSC certified" twice frozen pollock blocks.
The MSC took these reports seriously, and conducted an initial audit which found no violations, but also was inconclusive in certain areas. They followed this up with a second audit following the certification of the Russian fishery.
Under MSC’s policies, some products harvested during a fishery assessment period may eventually be sold as MSC certiifed once the fishery is approved, subject to specific constraints. In the case of Russian pollock, most pollock caught in 2013 would qualify for MSC certificates, once the fishery was certified provided the proper chain of custody was in place and the date and place of harvest and other details were known.
MSC wanted to verify that these procedures were followed correctly, and that there was not non-compliant Russian pollock coming into the supply chain.
Friday the MSC announced the results of their Russian pollock reconciliation. They said that 7% (5 out of 75) certificates of compliance were revoked, after these companies refused to provide detailed sales and purchase data that would allow a reconciliation to take place.
The remaining 70 companies, located in US, EU, China, Russia, and Hong Kong, complied with the request to turn over their sales data.
Under the MSC Chain of Custody, companies are required to respond to such a request.
This was the ground that led to the revocation of the certificates of the five companies that did not comply. The revocation was done by the Conformance Assessment body, who eventually suspended the certificates.
The reconciliation showed that for the 70 companies who agreed to the survey, the majority of fish sold as under assesment by the members of Pollock Catchers Association (PCA), the client group for the Russian SOO pollock fishery, was handled by companies further down the supply chain as non-MSC certified product. Where under assessment fish was sold as MSC certified pollock, following the fishery certification, full compliance with UMAF requirements was demonstrated.
The Russian SOO pollock reconciliation exercise was part of the MSC’s ongoing program to monitor the effectiveness of the chain of custody system. The MSC carries out additional assurance – including DNA testing, product tracebacks, and supply chain reconciliations – either in cases where specific traceability concerns have been identified, or to proactively monitor high-risk supply chains.
During 2013, the MSC performed tracebacks on MSC-labelled mackerel products following the suspension of seven MSC certified mackerel fisheries in the North East Atlantic. The process involved tracking samples of MSC-labelled products collected in different EU countries (UK, Sweden, Netherlands, and Denmark) back to the level of the fishery and found no cases of substitution or mislabelling.
Similar tracebacks were conducted following the MSC’s December 2013 DNA results. DNA testing showed that only 3 products from 320 samples tested were found to be mislabelled. As a result of the tracebacks on these three products, one company had its MSC certificate suspended for mislabelling and another agreed with their certifier to develop a corrective action plan to respond to an incident of substitution between two certified species. Areas of concern identified during the third traceback were passed on to the relevant certifier and further investigation is currently underway.
This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.