14. An Introduction to Vietnamese Pangasius Certification Systems (Pt. 2)

The Integrated Farm Assurance Pangasius Aquaculture standards are currently under development by GlobalGAP, a private certification body that focuses on all aspects of agricultural production including inputs, management, food safety and quality, environmental and social issues. The organization was originally called EUREPGAP (The Euro-Retailer Produce Working Group) and was first established to harmonize the quality, environmental and labour standards that had been developed independently by different British and European retailers. The GAP acronym stands for good agricultural practice, which speaks to how the organization envisions their comprehensive standards packages, as a tool to promote better agricultural practice. Over time the GAP program has grown to include more agricultural commodities and more aspects of production, and is now one of the most significant certifiers in global agriculture. Standards are developed at the request of interested producers or retailers, and if deemed appropriate and generated by committees of technical experts and mediated by public consultations via the internet (GlobalGAP 2009). The first draft of the Pangasius standards was trial audited in Vietnam in May 2008, and was submitted for a second round of public consultation in January 2009. The final standards will be released in April 2009, though it remains to be seen how they will accepted on the ground in Vietnam. GlobalGAP is a very strong force in international globalized agriculture, largely driven by retailers and indirectly by western consumers which has a significant impact on the approach to system change. During my time in Vietnam this standard was discussed on very few occasions and typically only technical and extension staff associated with industry, though “VietnamGAP” was mentioned in passing on several occasions, I understood this to refer to the GAA ACC, who are involved in the certification of Vietnamese Shrimp were working to develop a similar standard for Pangasius.

The Pangasius Aquaculture Dialogue is a certification scheme currently in development, one of 8 species specific aquaculture dialogues going on around the world. They are promoted by the World Wildlife Fund and are focused on generating social and environmental sustainability criteria. The fundamentals of the aquaculture dialogue initiative are outlined in a guidance document from the WWF based on criteria of the International Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labeling Alliance (ISEAL). The process is intended to generate standards that are:
· Created by a broad and diverse set of stakeholders
· Based on consensus
· Developed through a transparent process
· Science-based
· Measurable and performance-based
(WWF 2008)
Beyond this dialogues are sponsored by the WWF and asked to develop species specific standards which, when finalized, will be given over to a WWF cosponsored body, currently being called the Aquaculture Stewardship Council which will be responsible for implementing the certification scheme. At this time none of the individual dialogues has presented a final standard, so the real world application of this process remains to be seen, however WWF has previously been successfully involved standards initiatives including the Marine Stewardship Council and the Forest Stewardship Council. I attended the PAD inaugural meeting in Ho Chi Minh City in September 2007, and so far there have been three meetings and initial draft standards have been created. Fundamentally the aquaculture dialogues are intended to promote improved aquaculture performance. The focus on changing the practice of farming rather than specifying the characteristics of the final product is an example of a certification scheme implemented primarily as a development tool, which seems to be a subtle but important distinction from other certification schemes investigated in this thesis. Although this standard has not yet been implemented, my direct involvement in it provided me with useful insight into the development of standards, and how system boundaries play an implicit role in political and ethical decision making.

The four different certification initiatives that I am highlighting in this chapter all approach the issue of Pangasius certification with different governing images, in the Interactive Governance sense. These different images lead to divergent ideas on how to be sensitive, inclusive, flexible, cautious and how to keep perspective in the face of the challenges presented by the current Pangasius aquaculture configuration. However in the end, they are all seeking change the industry, to “improve performance”. In the following four sections of this chapter I will compare and contrast four different system elements and how each of these certification systems responds to the demands of system-to-be-governed and what this demonstrates about the images that they hold. Unfortunately because of a lack of implemented standards on the ground, this analysis will necessarily be limited to theoretical investigation. This will provide a theoretical version of certification governing systems against which to compare the existing system-to-be-governed. In the next section I will examine how these certification systems deal with the environmental issue of water management.