RFM Chain of Custody Standard - Announcement of 30 days comment period
RFM Chain of Custody Standard - 30 days public comment period announcement
Iceland Responsible Fisheries Foundation (IRFF) and the Certified Seafood Collaborative (CSC, Alaska) on behalf of their members and their respective fishing communities, are pleased to announce that the RFM Chain of Custody Standard is now available for 30-day public and stakeholder comment period.
The present Chain of Custody Standard was drafted in the beginning of 2021. The standard has been revised and approved by the IRFF technical committee and the CSC technical committee. It is intended for application in RFM certification programmes, including those currently under development.
Interested parties can find the instructions below and sumbit their comments to the email address sigrid@irff.is
Background information
Iceland took the initiative to develop the original version of this Standard, which was presented for public and stakeholder comment, and subsequently adopted for certification in 2011.
The standard framework was used in cooperative fashion by Iceland Responsible Fisheries Management and Alaska Responsible Fisheries Management, allowing both programs to introduce minor but meaningful modifications.
The main objective of this cooperation is to ensure a durable, international Chain of Custody Standard which serves as a reference document in support of transparent certification of well-managed, and responsible fisheries. Other certification programmes may be allowed to join this Standard provided that its requirements and rules have to be followed and met, without exception, in order to maintain the integrity and common goals of the programmes it represents, that led to the creation of this document.
The IRFF and CSC technical committees will separately but in cooperation and coordination consider all comments based on their content and objectiveness. Individual written responses to the comments will not be provided Instead, a summary of substantive comments received will be made publicly available in a non-attributable form.
Instructions
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 14th of October – 12th of November 2021(inclusive) and in accordance with the following format and instructions.
Comments of both positive and critical content on the Standard will be considered in a balanced manner. Please note, there is no obligation for specific entities and organizations 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 considered.
- Only one submission per organization should be made 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 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.