Revision of IRFM Standard - 60 days comment period

20 April 2016

Iceland Responsible Fisheries Foundation (IRFF), on behalf of its members and the fishing community of Iceland, is pleased to announce that the Iceland Responsible Fisheries Management Standard for the Certification of Icelandic Fisheries is now available for a 60 day public and stakeholder comment period, 20 April - 19 June 2016.

The standard, first issued in 2010 and revised in 2014 parallel to its ISO accreditation, has now been formally revised and updated by the IRFF Technical Committee according to its formal five year review. The review of the standard began in October 2015 and the updated draft standard was agreed by consensus by the IRFF TC in March 2016. Interested parties should read the instructions at the bottom of this page, and fill out the form to post comments.

Background information

The main objective of IRFM Certification is to allow Icelandic fishing industry applicants to demonstrate transparently that fisheries management and practices in Iceland are conducted responsibly in a credible and internationally recognised manner to the criteria specified by the FAO.

The Icelandic Responsible Fisheries Management (IRFM) Standard is a certification standard based on the 1995 FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries and on the FAO Guidelines for the Ecolabelling of Fish and Fishery Products from Marine Capture Fisheries adopted in 2005 and extended in 2009. The IRFM Standard was originally facilitated by the Fisheries Association of Iceland (FAI), but in February 2011, IRFF, a non-profit NGO, took over the operation and management of the IRF certification programme from the FAI. The Iceland Responsible Fisheries Foundation (IRFF) is the standard owner and the IRFF Technical Committee (TC) is responsible for writing, issuing, reviewing and revising the IRFM Standard. Members of the TC serve in their individual capacity as experts in their field of competence.

IRFF has received full accreditation for their IRFM Standard for fisheries management certification. The accreditation is to the internationally recognised ISO/IEC 17065:2012 Standard for certification of product and process schemes. The accreditation assessment was carried out by an International Accreditation Forum (IAF) member, the Irish National Accreditation Board (INAB).

Stated in the Terms of Reference (TOR) for the IRFF Technical Committee, the responsibility of the Committee is i.a. to conduct a review of the standard at least every five years.

Prior to the formal review of the standard, the IRFF Technical Committee announced 30 days public invitation for interested parties to comment on the present day IRFM Standard.

The Committee will consider all comments based on their content and objectiveness, with respect to providing an improvement in the effectiveness of the Responsible Fisheries Management Certification consistent with the overall objectives of IRFF. The decision to adopt, amend or review the standard and the timeframe that such consideration will be made will remain under the direction of the Technical Committee. The Committee does not intend on providing individual written response to comments. A summary of substantive comments received during the public consultation period will be made publically available in a non-attributable way.

Instructions

We wish to publically announce that the Iceland Responsible Fisheries Management Standard - Requirements for Certification of a Fish Stock as Having “Responsible Fisheries Management” Revision 2.0, is now available for comment by interested parties.

We invite any interested party, who may wish to make a constructive and specific comment on the Standard, to do so within the period of 20 April – 19 June 2016 (inclusive) and in accordance with the following format and instructions. Comments of both a positive and critical content on the Standard will be considered in a balanced manner. Please note, there is no obligation for specific entities and organisations to comment if they do not wish to do so.

Instructions for the submission of comments:

Unattributed comments (without name, address and contact e-mail) will not be accepted.
Only one submission should be made per organisation and must be attributable to a principal contact person that represents that organization.
Comments cannot represent the views of more than a single organization. Comments received pertaining to represent the views of more than one organization will not be considered.
Comments must specifically state the Section and clause(s) of the Standard of interest in order to be eligible for consideration.

See the IRFM Standard in PDF format. Please note that individual responses to submissions will not be made.

Download the press release.