MSC certification requirements

The MSC standards for sustainable fishing and seafood traceability are both supported by MSC certification requirements. When certifiers are carrying out assessments against either standard, the requirements establish how to assess the fishery or business against the relevant standard.  

The MSC standards and certification requirements ensure that only seafood from a certified sustainable fishery is sold with the MSC ecolabel and meet best practice guidelines for certification and ecolabelling.

What are the MSC certification requirements?

The MSC certification requirements were developed in 2011and are designed for use by certifiers. They are structured in sequence based on the ISO Guide 65, the document upon which the MSC certification system is based.

The MSC certification requirements:

• Set out how the standards should be interpreted by certifiers conducting assessments
• Ensure that the performance of fisheries and businesses against the MSC standards is properly assessed during assessments
• Ensure that all assessments against an MSC standard are carried out consistently, irrespective of where, when and by whom the assessment is carried out.

There are 3 parts:

Part A: General requirements for all certifiers
Sets out the steps that accredited certifiers must take to assess against the MSC standards for sustainable fishing  and chain of custody.

Part B:  Chain of Custody certification requirements

Sets out how accredited certifiers should assess organisations in the supply chain against the MSC Chain of Custody standard, to ensure that the supply chain for MSC certified seafood is secure.

Part C: Fishery certification requirements
Sets out how the MSC standard for sustainable fishing  should be interpreted when assessing fisheries for MSC certification. This includes steps in the assessment process as well as the assessment tree used to score fisheries.

Current version of the MSC certification requirements

Version 1 of the MSC certification requirements was released in August, 2011. There has been no alteration to the way assessments are carried out with the development of the new certification requirements.

The aim was to consolidate previous MSC scheme documents into a single clear, concise document that did not involve substantive modification of current requirements. This requirement is the intellectual property of the MSC and is periodically updated by the MSC Technical Advisory Board.

Version 1.1 was issued in October, 2011 incorporating revised Group CoC requirements and correcting typos, page numbering, wrong and missing referencing and unreadable flowcharts.

Download the latest version of MSC certification requirements 

Contact us

For further information please email standards@msc.org