Framework for a Salmon Aquaculture Containment Policy in the State of Maine
May 1, 2001
In August 2000, representatives from the aquaculture industry and the environmental community began meeting to discuss potential areas of collaboration. From the beginning the objective has been for all parties to work towards a predictable and stable regulatory climate for the aquaculture industry that minimizes interactions between sea run salmon and farmed salmon in the waters of the State of Maine. While this policy alone does not address all of the concerns of the environmental community or all issues relevant for industry, both sides recognize the potential it holds for making significant progress towards the creation of both an economically and environmentally sustainable aquaculture industry.
The objective of this containment policy is to minimize interactions between sea run and farmed salmon. To establish a system that will ensure progress towards this objective, we have developed the containment policy detailed below. The policy is based on our shared belief that the most efficient method for preventing the interaction of sea run and farmed salmon is to determine agreed upon standards and reporting requirements that the industry would meet. The policy is designed to encourage compliance by all Maine salmon growers while allowing individual companies or sites sufficient flexibility to develop site specific containment plans to meet those standards. This approach draws on the aquaculture industryıs expertise and awareness of evolving technologies and management practices.
This policy is intended to allow for the continuous improvement in the containment of farmed salmon and to develop a mandatory, enforceable Containment Management System (CMS) for Maine salmon farmers. For this to happen, the policy must require compliance and have a set of mechanisms to monitor, identify and respond to problems as they appear. This policy needs to be transparent to the regulators and needs to be sufficiently transparent to ensure the publicıs confidence in the process and to allow the industry to demonstrate their commitment and ability to keep fish on the farms. It also needs to protect certain business confidential information.
There are three main parts to this containment policy:
The participatory development of a standard CMS that serves as a model for company plans. Individual companies will then develop company specific, business confidential CMS plans approved by DMR and transparent to the regulators to comply with the standards and reporting requirements and predetermined corrective actions of the standard CMS;
The development, testing and implementation of a marking system for all farmed fish;
The development of an escape response plan in the event of an actual escape.
A CMS is a process control system built on seven principles which, when implemented together, form a logical and realistic system for minimizing the escape of farmed salmon. CMS systems are based on a Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) system and the aquaculture industryıs October 1998 Code of Practice. HACCP systems were originally developed by NASA to ensure quality control and safety in the space program. The HAACP approach has been adopted by the Food and Drug Administration Food Safety Program and has been used widely in the seafood processing industry. It is therefore familiar to the industry and the federal regulators. HAACP systems consist of a company specific, business confidential HAACP plan, a paper trail that documents operational performance, and an auditing system. A standard Containment Management System will be developed for the Maine salmon farming industry based on the following seven principles:
1. Assessment of the hazards and risks. 2. Determination of critical control points. 3. Establishment of critical limits and tolerances. 4. Establishment of limit monitoring procedures and schedules. 5. Establishment of predetermined corrective actions. 6. Establishment of record keeping systems and procedures. 7. Establishment of a verification system.
The working group recognizes that public funding may be needed and appropriate for achieving the goals of this containment policy. Particularly, funding for the development of an auditing system, tagging system, river sorting structures and research may be worthy of state and federal funding. Our working group has met on a regular basis over the past eight months to see if we could reach a consensus on what a containment policy might look like. From the outset, we recognized the need to include other groups in the discussions, particularly the federal agencies and the State of Maine who ultimately decide policy and set regulations. Our intent has been to come up with an agreed upon policy and then to approach the agencies and other stakeholders with our proposal.
We urge the federal agencies to embrace this collaborative approach, to work with us in the development of streamlined solutions and importantly, to avoid the potential for inter-agency conflicts that may arise as the result of differing jurisdictional mandates. The working group agrees that the process outlined below is intended to adequately address concerns about marking, containment, inventory tracking and reporting raised by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service in their letter to the US Corps of Engineers dated May 15, 2000.
The working group, comprised of the signatories of this document, include representatives from the Maine Aquaculture Association, Atlantic Salmon of Maine, Heritage Salmon, Inc., Stolt Sea Farms, Trout Unlimited, Conservation Law Foundation and the Atlantic Salmon Federation.
This containment policy strives to minimize interaction between sea run and farmed fish.
1. The Containment Management System approach will be the foundation for the responsible containment of farmed salmon in Maine waters. The CMS will identify critical control points in farm operations to limit potential escapes, set effective and practical operational standards and procedures for corrective actions at each point and develop ongoing record keeping and verification procedures to ensure compliance with the CMS. A standard CMS will form a template for company specific containment management systems. As with other parts of this policy, care will be given to provide transparency and openness in the development of the CMS. A technical committee comprised of industry, regulatory authorities and the environmental community will assist an independent third party in the development of the standard CMS.
Company specific CMSıs will be audited at least once annually for compliance. We believe that the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) is in the best position to be responsible for the program through a contractual arrangement with a third party auditor selected by DMR and approved by the appropriate federal agencies. Third party audit results will be forwarded by DMR to the appropriate federal agencies on a predetermined schedule. The standard CMS and cumulative audit results will be reviewed by the working group at least once per year. Audits may be announced or unannounced visits that range from a quick record keeping review to a more thorough inspection of the site to ensure compliance with the facility CMS.
2. The reporting of known escapes would be required. a. All known escapes where fish were observed to have escaped or believed to have escaped due to circumstances such as the discovery of holes in nets, pen submergence and fish transfer accidents, must be reported as soon as possible and within 24 hours of the discovery to the Department of Marine Resources. DMR would then immediately report the incident to the appropriate state and federal agencies. The CMS will detail what events will trigger this reporting requirement. b. Other incidents which might cause escapes will be logged and kept as part of the daily site operating log. Implementation of the CMS may require predetermined corrective actions and/or immediate reporting to certain anticipated events.
The reporting of known escapes and other logged events required under the standard CMS will be assembled into a database, kept by the third party auditing firm and accessible to agency review on a predetermined schedule. This will be used to identify trends that may be occurring. The reporting and logging of this information will not be used to penalize site operators by the regulatory authorities. Conversely, the deliberate failure of proper reporting and logging of incidents that are later detected through the audit process will be considered a serious violation by the authorities.
3. There will be two kinds of audits performed by the third party. First, annual audits will be used to ensure compliance with this policy and to identify growers utilizing exemplary management practices. Second, the report of a known escape event to DMR of a predetermined level as specified in the standard CMS will trigger additional audit(s) of the facility. The level of review will be determined by the standard CMS. The purpose of the audit is to help identify how and why the escape occurred and what lessons can be learned for other sites. Where there have been repeated escapes, more frequent audits of the site may be required. For events that qualify to be logged on site, the information will be reviewed within the guidelines of the standard auditing process and will be inputted into the database annually.
A certification of companies meeting the CMS protocols and procedures should be developed to enable them to receive streamlined license renewals and other required permits. Conversely, sites not receiving certification may receive additional regulatory reviews. Moreover, this paragraph is not intended to insulate growers from regulatory sanctions in the event of deliberate violations of operational requirements developed as a result of this policy where audits reveal such violations.
4. All sites will implement an inventory system that maintains historical records relating to numbers of fish at key production points where counting is feasible including logs of known or suspected escapes, dead fish removed from pens, and known loss of inventories. These records should include, but not be limited to, an accounting of the number of fish per pen at any point in time, the number of new fish introduced, and the number of fish that died, were released, possessed, or escaped for each pen. This information will help verify the reporting of known escapes and the logging of other events whose causes may not be known.
There is a recognition that the ability to know exactly the number of fish in a pen at any point in time may be impractical due to counting error, unaccounted mortality and the lack of good counting technology. These sources of uncertainty are expected to decrease as counting technology and husbandry practices improve. However, a standard plus/minus error can be established for the industry by reconciling the tracked inventory with the harvests from those pens that had no escapes. This reconciliation process should distinguish between different counting methods and develop method specific estimates of variance. These estimates, in combination with returns of marked fish to the weirs, will provide another feedback mechanism for detecting losses.
At this time, companies use different tracking systems and consider this proprietary information. Either a standard inventory system needs to be employed by the industry or this information needs to be made available to stakeholders in some manner to ensure confidence outside of the industry that careful inventories of fish are being conducted. It is expected that the publicly available information from the CMS audits will accomplish this goal.
5. The design, testing and phased-in implementation of a marking system will begin in the fall of 2001. The goals of the marking system are to distinguish between fish escaped from U.S. farms, Canadian farms and salmon from other sources, to evaluate the effectiveness of this containment policy and to trace salmon back to their site of origin, if reasonable.
The desire of the working group is to implement a cost effective marking system phased into the industry. In 2001, several marking systems will be tested and evaluated. The marking systems that will be tested may include coded wire tags, genetic marking, temperature manipulation of the circulae, freeze branding and any other marking technique that shows promise. While the federal agencies and environmental groups currently prefer coded wire tags, the industry is concerned with the cost and their effects on smolt mortality, growth rates, tag migration in the body and whether the stress related to the tags will affect the simultaneous vaccination of the fish.
The goal is to begin full-scale implementation in 2002 or as soon thereafter as feasible. A committee will be formed to help design, test, evaluate and recommend implementation of the preferred approach and to recommend cost sharing solutions to implement the system. If none of the above marking methods is deemed reasonable, the committee will make recommendations for further study. The committee will be comprised of representatives from industry, regulatory authorities and the environmental community.
6. The Atlantic Salmon Commission (ASC), in consultation with federal agencies, should identify rivers where installation of weirs are needed to screen out escaped aquaculture fish and to provide important data to the Atlantic Salmon Commission on the numbers and conditions of sea run salmon returning to the rivers. In addition, the weirs will also provide feedback on the marking system and on the success of this containment policy in reducing escapes. Other sorting structures may include a trap at a dam (ie. Union River) or a temporary counting fence such as those used in Canada. The oversight of the weirs by the ASC with funding provided by the federal agencies is expected to continue in the future. The need to keep the weirs in place longer in the fall was recognized by both the industry and environmental community.
7. An escape response plan for reported escapes will be developed by a committee comprised of industry, regulatory authorities and environmental groups. The desire is for each site to have a plan that may include the deployment of nets to recapture fish and the possible use of temporary weirs in nearby rivers. The plan may include general permits given out by the regulatory authorities to facilitate a quick response to any escape. The working group cautions that only known, practical recapture techniques be utilized and that further research be undertaken to better determine the behavior of farmed salmon once they get outside of their penned environment.
8. A committee made up of growers, state agencies, federal agencies and environmental groups will review the Containment Management System and this Containment Policy every two years. This does not preclude changes to the code more frequently as innovations in technology occur or as significant problems are identified. Furthermore, research should be encouraged at the University of Maineıs Center for Cooperative Aquaculture Research, or other appropriate facilities, to address alternative strain development and other developing technologies.
Sebastian Belle, Maine Aquaculture Association
Des Fitzgerald, Atlantic Salmon of Maine
Jeff Kaelin, Heritage Salmon, Inc.
Mark F. J. Kesselring, Stolt Sea Farm Inc.
Jeff Reardon, Trout Unlimited
Peter Shelley, Conservation Law Foundation
Andrew Goode, Atlantic Salmon Federation
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