Sustainable Seafood Coalition (SSC)
Members’ meeting minutes
Date: 14 July, 2015
Location: The Counting House, 50 Cornhill, London EC3V 3PD
Number of attendees: 13 total (including 3 ClientEarth staff acting as facilitator, secretariat and minute taker)
Summary of agreed points
Item 1: Future priorities for the SSC
- Expand membership to include all other interested players in the seafood supply chain in the UK.
- The SSC will establish working groups that address issues that will help implement the sourcing code. The first of these will be a working group on Fishery Improvement Projects.
- An EU wide ecolabel for fish and aquaculture products is not supported by this group. However, if it goes ahead, the SSC would like to become involved its development to help ensure it is robust.
- Promote the SSC codes (or relevant aspects of them) as a collective voice, in the EU and globally.
- Establish a structure to the SSC, such as a steering group and/or working groups on particular issues, once membership has expanded more.
- Relevant ClientEarth updates will be shared with SSC members by email and/or in person at meetings, where appropriate.
Item 2: Review of SSC aims
- The aims are updated as summarised in Item 2.
Item 3: Potential SSC membership fees
- Turnover is an appropriate measure for establishing which membership band a business fits in to as it is transparent and publicly available.
- The top two membership band fees as suggested by the secretariat are appropriate (turnover greater than £1billion = £3,000 per annum; turnover of £100m - £1bn = £2,000). There were no members present that fitted into the bottom two proposed bands, so the secretariat will consult with relevant members and amend as appropriate (but fees will only potentially be lower; they will not be higher).
If any current members are not able or willing to pay, their membership will cease.
Fees will be on an annual basis from 2016, with pro rata invoices sent to cover the period from 1 October 2015. This means that applications for external funding will be a request for co-funding.
Item 4: Any other business
- Members agreed the SeaWeb Seafood Summit could be a good opportunity to promote work of the SSC to a wide audience, and some would be interested in sitting on a panel.
