Litchfield Farms Organic & Natural

“ Authentic” Certification Program

The “Authentic” certification process assures each of our products is thoroughly evaluated to meet our cultural sustainability criteria. Each of our products is awarded an “Authenticity Level” that reflects the overall sustainability of the product.  The authenticity levels are 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 with four being the highest level of sustainability.  We also review seafood of other suppliers and producers and award a similar sustainability rating upon request and compliance with our certification program.

The underlying premises for our beliefs and sustainability criteria are:

• Seafood (and all food) reflects an essential element of cultural identity.
• Seafood provides unique health benefits.
• Wild capture fisheries often are contaminated by environmental toxins such as mercury and PCBs.
• Wild capture fisheries are inadequate to supply the seafood demanded and required by a growing population in both the developed and developing worlds.
• Wild capture fisheries must be reserved for utilization by those communities that have traditionally harvested and sustained themselves on those fisheries. Global industrial harvesting of seafood is unacceptable.
• Aquacultured seafood must be encouraged and supported to provide both alternative protein sources to land based agricultural proteins and to supplant wild fisheries as the primary source of seafood for human consumption. Aquaculture is often preferable to agriculture as it is more efficient and has lower environmental impacts.
• Aquacultured seafood permits the more effective management of wild fisheries and preserves biodiversity by reducing the demands placed upon capture fisheries.
• The fact aquaculture is imperfect does not justify the excessive harvest of wild fish populations. Only through support of aquacultured products will aquaculture technologies mature to a state that their impact is minimized upon the environment and biological community.
• Marine resources must be managed similarly to terrestrial ones including the expansion of marine preserves and no fish zones, comprehensive “sea use” (rather than “land use”) regulations, and enforceable environmental regulation.

These beliefs motivate our search for exceptional aquacultured producers and artisanal wild capture harvesters.

            Authentic certification is based the following issues and principals.

Issues Related to capture (wild) fisheries:

• By catch;
• Habitat damage; and
• Over fishing.

Principals underlying sustainable capture fisheries:

• have a low vulnerability to fishing pressure, and hence a low probability of being over fished, because of their inherent life-history characteristics;
• have stock structure and abundance sufficient to maintain or enhance long-term fishery productivity;
• are captured using techniques that minimize the catch of unwanted and/or unmarketable species;
• are captured in ways that maintain natural functional relationships among species in the ecosystem, conserve the diversity and productivity of the surrounding ecosystem, and do not result in irreversible ecosystem state changes; and
• have a management regime that implements and enforces all local, national and international laws and utilizes a precautionary approach to ensure the long-term productivity of the resource and integrity of the ecosystem.

Issues related to aquaculture fisheries:

• Feeds, especially use of wild species in feeds as well as adjuncts and chemicals, including antibiotics;
• Waste management;
• Antibiotic/fungicides/algaecides/hormones/preservatives and other chemical use;
• Environmental and habitat damage;
• Parasite and disease spread to wild fish;
• Effect of escaped fish on local genetics, species competition and ecosystem balances;
• Effect on local communities.

Issues related to seafood from sustainable aquaculture:

• uses less wild caught fish (in the form of fish meal and fish oil) than it produces in the form of edible marine fish protein, and thus provides net protein gains for society;
• does not pose a substantial risk of deleterious effects on wild fish stocks through the escape of farmed fish;
• does not pose a substantial risk of deleterious effects on wild fish stocks through the amplification, retransmission or introduction of disease or parasites;
• employs methods to treat and reduce the discharge of organic waste and other potential contaminants so that the resulting discharge does not adversely affect the surrounding ecosystem; and 
• implements and enforces all local, national and international laws and customs and utilizes a precautionary approach which favors conservation of the environment in the face of irreversible environmental risks for daily operations and industry expansion.