The national SAMAQ certification program is directly linked to ADMEWA’s guidelines for certification of ALL the national aquaculture facilities under the GAA/BAP program by 2020 the latest.
The SAMAQ program takes into account these guidelines and is designed and developed around the operating facilities’ GAA/BAP certification process.
More specifically, the SAMAQ guidelines and standards are a selection of the most critical GAA/BAP points for sustainable operation and for assuring the safety of the products.
While via GAA/BAP certification the Saudi products of aquaculture will receive international market recognition, in the process of doing so the producing companies will benchmark their operations with highly acknowledged production standards and operation practices
In turn, via SAMAQ certification, and accordingly through SAMAQ product labelling, the products of the Saudi Aquaculture industry will acquire a differentiating characteristic on the retailers’ bench.
Using the SAMAQ logo the industry will be able to market the intrinsic advantageous attributes of its products (local production, freshness, product safety, nutritional value etc) and build respective consumer and promotional awareness actions in the national and regional (GCC) markets.
GAA/BAP certification is the basic pre-requisite for SAMAQ certification. However, since ADMEWA’s guidelines are for GAA/BAP certification to be achieved by all operating facilities by 2020 at the latest, until that time, facilities with no valid GAA/BAP certificate can be considered eligible for SAMAQ certification provided that they are listed in the iBAP programme.
