Alaskan pollock, Theragra chalcogramma. (Photo Credit: NOAA FishWatch)

MSC suspends five Russian pollock certifications

A compliance audit of the Russian Sea of Okhotsk (SOO) pollock fishery, to investigate the integrity of the fishery’s supply chain, led the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) to suspend the certificates of five suppliers.

Between October 2013 and February 2014, the MSC conducted a detailed reconciliation exercise on global sales and purchasing of MSC certified and ‘under MSC assessment fish’ (UMAF) pollock. This is to ensure MSC labelled products were fully compliant with MSC Chain of Custody (CoC) requirements. This reconciliation included products from both the Russian fishery and the MSC-certified Alaskan pollock fishery.

The exercise was a precautionary monitoring measure, which was conducted due to the complex UMAF requirements relating to the Russian SOO pollock fishery.

Under MSC’s ‘UMAF’ requirements, some products harvested during a fishery assessment period may eventually be sold as ‘MSC’ once the fishery is certified, subject to specific constraints. Through the collection of data on volumes of certified products bought and sold at different points along the supply chain, the MSC can verify whether UMAF procedures were followed correctly.

MSC contacted 75 CoC certified companies from different parts of the global supply chain (US, EU, China, Russia, and Hong Kong) to request sales and purchasing volumes of MSC certified and UMAF pollock products from Alaskan and Russian SOO  fisheries.

Under the MSC CoC, companies are required to respond to such a request, but five companies did no provide the full set of requested data to the MSC. In these cases, the request was followed up by the conformance assessment body (CAB), who issued a major non-conformity and eventually suspended the certificates.

The monitoring exercise allowed the MSC to cross-reference purchase and sale transactions across various links in the supply chain. This provides an additional level of assurance beyond the verification of traceability records at each step of the supply chain which is required in routine MSC CoC audits.

The reconciliation showed that the majority of fish sold as ‘UMAF’ 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 ‘UMAF’ fish was sold as MSC certified pollock, following the fishery certification, full compliance with UMAF requirements was demonstrated.

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