FAO (FIPM) organized a special session on "Market access issues related to multiple certification schemes for fish and fishery products in international trade" at the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade (IIFET) Conference, 2014.

Market access problems in international fish trade have been high on the agenda of FAO member countries, particularly developing countries. FAO has been working on number of market access issues and informing member countries of the work done and upcoming issues at the FAO Committee on Fisheries (COFI) Sub-Committee on International Fish Trade. One of the issues raised by several member countries was the multiple certifications pertaining to non-regulatory requirements. In the food safety area, adoption of Good Hygienic Practices (GHP) and Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) is now mandatory in most seafood processing and exporting countries. The Codex Code of Practice for Fish and Fishery Products provides guidance to the stakeholders regarding implementation of these.

Since GHP and HACCP are now part of regulatory requirement, the implementation is subject to inspection and audit by the national competent authorities. Nevertheless, in international fish trade, processors are obliged to have private certifications and often, they need to have more than one private certification addressing the same issue (eg certificates of compliance to standards of British Retail Consortium, International Featured standards, Safe Quality Food Institute, etc). This is demanding considerable resource and is reducing  the returns to  producers and processors as well as adding  costs to importers, retailers and ultimately to consumers in importing countries. Achieving equivalency among comparable standards would therefore benefit the sector while maintaining quality and safety levels. Recognising equivalence of SPS requirements and harmonisation would also be in line with Articles 3 and 4 of the WTO SPS agreement.

he FAO special Session tried to analyse the problem in different geographical areas. The first presentation from Audun Lem and Felix Dent of FAO set the stage for discussions covering the status of international fish trade, trends in markets, prices and future outlook. This was followed by presentations on covering the status in Africa (Nada Bougouss), Asia (Nguyen Dung and Thomas Darmawan) and Latin America (Renata Borroso). Iddya Karunasagar presented on trade standard compliance failures in international market as an indicator of market access issues and FAO involvement with benchmarking agencies that are working towards recognition of equivalence in these certifications. The talk by Esther Garrido Gamarro addressed costs involved in multiple certifications, the situation in Spain and the perception of EU based importers. During discussion, the participants urged FAO to continue to work with benchmarking agencies and minimize the multiple requirements for the same issue in international fish trade.

The conference was held from 7 to 11 July 2014, at QUT Gardens Point, Brisbane, Australia.