SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton — February 12, 2014 — The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), based in London, is making a second attempt to hire a Regional Director – Americas.
The initial pool of job applicants was considered in early December, and no suitable candidate was found. As a result, the MSC re-opened the position to applications, with February 10th being the new deadline.
They may be conducting some interviews as early as this week.
Kerry Coughlin, the previous director for the Americas resigned, effective at the end of November.
The new regional directors first task, in our opinion, will be to try and repair some of the damaged relationships in Alaska, specifically by endorsing a world in which multiple certifications schemes exist, as has been done by some major companies such as Walmart and Sodexo.
This is the path followed by Chris Ninnes, formerly deputy head of the MSC, when he left that job to become the founding CEO of the Aquaculture Stewardship Council. The ASC was founded in the Netherlands after a multi-year stakeholder process called 'aquaculture dialogues'.
As a result of Ninnes approach, that embraced other standards organizations besides his own, a series of cooperative steps have been taken between the ASC, the BAP/GAA certification program, and Global Gap to harmonize their standards where possible and cut down on the inspection and administrative expenses faced by Aquaculture suppliers.
The America's director does not have the power to take this approach without full support from the UK head office – but clearly success in the job will depend on how much of a change the organization can make from its record in the U.S. over the last few years.
This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.