Technical Assurance Committee

Francisco Aldon has been CEO of MarinTrust since 2020. He is an active member of the various governing committees for the MarinTrust program, leading the development of the standards relevant to the production and further transformation of marine ingredients. Francisco is based in London, United Kingdom and has more than 15 years of professional experience in the food sector specifically in the production of marine ingredients such as fishmeal and fish oil. Graduated in Fisheries Engineering from UNALM, Peru with a Master of Science – Marine Ecology and Environmental Management from Queen Mary University of London. Frequent speaker at different international conferences on certification for responsible sourcing and production practices of marine ingredients as well as traceability in the aquaculture supply chain.

Francisco is also a member of the GDST Supervisory Board and a member of the Technical Committee for the development of the GSA Seafood Processing Standard.  

David Yunker is the Governance, Compliance and Training Manager for the Global Seafood Alliance (GSA), an international nongovernmental organization dedicated to advancing responsible seafood practices through education, advocacy, and third-party assurances. David has seven years of experience leading GSA in the areas of third-party benchmarking, quality management system development, internal auditing, standard development processes, and auditor training. His background also includes ALCOA data integrity, technical writing, ISO 9001, and ISO 17065/67 for program management.

 Jose Llorente is PhD Biologist  (University of Granada, Spain) with an Aquaculture Master degree and more than 20 years’ working experience in different aquaculture areas and species, and food safety. Jose moved into standard certification in a dual role: as auditor for different sustainability and environmental third-party standards covering production (ASC, BAP, GlobalGAP, EU Organic, Naturland, Biosuisse, etc), compound feed manufacturing (GlobalGAP CFM v3.0), sustainability of Marine Raw Materials (IFFO RS and MarinTrust CoC), and Scheme Manager (MarinTrust and GlobalGAP) in SAI Global (GlobalTrust) and NSF. Jose started to work for LRQA in 2021 where he is now Aquaculture Technical Manager.

Pham Viet Anh has a Masters in fisheries management and a PhD in applied ecology from the universities of Bergen and Ghent respectively.

From 2003 to 2006, he worked for the Research Institute for Marine Fisheries at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), Viet Nam as a fisheries scientist on marine stock assessment and biology.

From 2008-2018 he worked for the Directorate of Fisheries, a management authority under MARD, responsible for fisheries’ sustainable development and management, especially the prevention and elimination of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. At the same time, he was nominated as a national coordinator of a project funded by GEF/UNDP for managing tuna fisheries to support Viet Nam in complying with the requirements of the Tuna Regional Fisheries Management Organization of Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission. He was also selected as a focal point of the FAO funding project Strategies for Trawl Fisheries Bycatch Management for bycatch mitigation of trawl fisheries in Viet Nam.

From 2018 to now, he is a Technical Key Account Manager at GLOBALG.A.P. He is responsible for Aquaculture by providing technical support for certification bodies, farm assurers and other stakeholders regarding implementation of the GLOBALG.A.P. standards, including the Compound Feed Manufacturing standard. He has also been involved on the revision and development process of the GLOBALG.A.P. Aquaculture related standards.

Emma Matheson is the Quality Systems Manager for  BioMar Ltd, UK. Emma has worked within the Scottish Aquaculture industry as a valued employee of BioMar Ltd. for 20+ years and has been involved in a number of Technical and Quality roles during that time. Currently responsible for Quality Systems and certifications, including UFAS, ASC, BAP, EU Organic, Naturland, HALAL, Label Rouge, COOP Italia, she has also been Formulator for BioMar for 15 years. This provides her with a great understanding of a number of feed related standards and the associated requirements of the raw materials being utilized. Emma is also a lead auditor for the Environmental standard ISO 14001:2018.

Mr. Kevin Edwards is the Vice President, Global Market Development with the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability, a non-profit Foundation with a vision and mission focusing on the adoption and implementation of digital, interoperability traceability in wild-caught and aquaculture supply chains.

Mr. Edwards's experience in the audit and certification business sector occurred during his 19-year career with the SGS Group. Having received training in non-food, product inspections, factory quality and capacity audits, and corporate social responsibility, we worked for five years on client projects in the Americas and Asia. During that time, he co-authored their first supply chain security audit in the wake of the US Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) and participated in auditor training. He also led the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) technical working group (non-food) with SGS representatives from US, UK and Asia. 

 Mr. Edwards's experience in the Food sector began with second party GMP & HACCP Audits of factories exporting product for leading international brands and private label retailers. He represented SGS at Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) meetings and presented a session after his work with the US FDA and SGS audit teams in Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia demonstrating the BRC-GS Food certification audits. Driven by the expanding interest within the food sector for corporate social responsibility monitoring of food harvesting and processing and having received additional SGS training in CSR and standards such as SMETA and BSCI, he worked on global projects primarily in the Fruit & Vegetable, and Seafood sectors.  This work included the management of the GAA BAP scheme within SGS until additional colleagues were hired. He regularly attended the technical working group meetings. 

 Mr. Edwards was selected to represent SGS within the Seafood Task Force, and that work also included assessments of seafood and feed ingredient standards for gaps between them and other CSR tools. With one colleague at SGS, they developed SGS's own standard, checklist and training tools for auditors conducting fishing vessel audits.