Marketing and organic certification of fish production

If a farmer intends to sell his fish on a local, regional, national or international market as ‘organically certified’, he must fulfil all requirements of organic aquaculture production and undergo inspection and certification by an independent certification body. If a farmer wants to export his products, he should supply his fish products to bigger companies or producer associations, as they are familiar with the rules of major markets. Even the local market for organic fish can be developed to target those customers that require sustainably produced fish products.

However, organic certification requires some planning and involves additional costs for inspection and certification. If the fish are to be sold as organic, all production steps need to be inspected regularly by an official inspection body. If fish production is managed without external feeding, the requirements are fairly easy to realise. The more complex the production regime, the more complex certification will be. Other costs come from the need to use certified organic feeds, if any are used. Even if a farmer relies on external feed sources of by-products like rice-bran, tapioca starch or press-cake from vegetable oil production, these sources need to be integrated in an organic production cycle. This means that all external feed to the fish production needs to be checked regularly by an inspection body. Small enterprises, which produce smaller volumes of fish, can collaborate together in a producer organisation and establish an internal control system (ICS). This can take some time to be instituted, often several weeks or months.

The main concerns organic certification in fish production includes:

• Feeding sources
• GMO-free production
• No use of hormones
• No prophylactic use of antibiotics and other medicines
• No negative effects or at least minimum possible effects on the environment
• No production in areas with risk of contamination (e.g. intensive conventional production of cash crops like cotton nearby)
• Setting up an organic management plan including environmental concerns
• Keeping of production records
• Processing the fish according to organic rules