EU Regulation on Organic Aquaculture

Abstract

The first EU-wide regulation for the production and labelling of organic products was published in 1991. This regulation included only rules for plant production and food from ingredients of plant origin, while the production rules for livestock were adopted in 1999, and, finally, rules for organic aquaculture entered in force on July 1, 2010.

Specific principles applicable to organic aquaculture are the following: (1) organic aquaculture shall comply with the principle of sustainable exploitation of fisheries; (2) animal health should be maintained by encouraging the natural immunological defence of the animal, as well as the selection of appropriate breeds and husbandry practices; (3) the observance of a high level of animal welfare respecting species-specific needs; (4) breeds should be chosen having regard to the capacity of animals to adapt to local conditions, their vitality and their resistance to disease or health problems; (5) rearing artificially induced polypoid animals is excluded; (6) the biodiversity of natural aquatic ecosystems, the continuing health of the aquatic environment and the quality of surrounding aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems in aquaculture production shall be maintained; (7) aquatic organisms shall be fed with feed from sustainable exploitation of fisheries or with organic feed composed of agricultural ingredients from organic farming and of natural nonagricultural substances.

In addition to general controls, organic food and feed and its production, trade and labelling are subject to an additional control system established by the EU Organic Regulations. Such control system aims at guaranteeing the production processes and not the products themselves, by verifying and certifying that each operator in the supply chain (farmers, processors, traders, importers) comply with the correct application of the organic production rules. Indeed, the control authority/body has to carry out minimum one physical inspection per year of every organic operator. The number of inspections can be increased to more than one per year according to the results of the evaluation of the risk of the specific operator. Additional random visits are carried out to minimum 10% of the operators, and at least 10% of all the inspections have to be carried out without pre-announcement, so called unannounced inspections. Considering the New Organic Regulation (EU) 2018/848, which will apply from 2021, operators for which previous controls have not revealed any non-compliance affecting the integrity of organic products during the last 3 years and operators that are considered as presenting low likelihood of non-compliance can be verified every 24 months (derogation to the mandatory annual inspection). Moreover, group certification will be allowed everywhere in the EU and outside the EU for group of small operators, including the ones producing aquaculture animals, providing that criteria have to be met to be certified under this system.