ASC opens consultation on its Certification and Accreditation Requirements

The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) today launched a public consultation on its Certification and Accreditation Requirements (CAR). The consultation will be open for four weeks, from 17 July until 14 August.

ASC’s CAR sets out requirements for certification against the ASC standards to enable all Conformity Assessment Bodies (CABs) to operate in a consistent and controlled manner.

The aim of the consultation is to further improve the CAR. In line with ASC’s multi-stakeholder approach, this consultation is an opportunity for stakeholders to provide their views and proposals for improvement to the document.

Bas Geerts, ASC Standards Director, said: “The CAR has been in place for the last three years, this has allowed many people to gain experience in using the document. ASC has collected feedback based on the practical experience and observations of CABs and other stakeholders. This is now the time to bring this feedback together with input from the wider stakeholder community to help shape the next version of the CAR.”

Accompanying the revised CAR will be a new document that will provide guidance to a number of sections in the CAR, for example, providing greater clarity on non-conformities.

How to take part in the consultation

The public consultation closes on 14 August.

You can review the consultation documents online and email feedback and suggestions based on your expertise and experience to standards@asc-aqua.org.

Next steps

ASC will use the feedback from stakeholders to inform revisions to the CAR. The next version of the CAR will be prepared ready for sign off by the ASC Board later this year.

Following the launch of the revised CAR, CABs will have a three month transition period.

During the transition period ASC will organise a number of webinars for CABs in different regions to update them on the changes in the CAR.