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ASC launches ASC Farm Standard

May 15, 2025 — Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) launched its new certification standard for farmed seafood at the Seafood Expo Global in Barcelona, Spain. Over 200 attendees from across the supply chain—including producers, retailers, processors, industry bodies, and media—joined the long-awaited launch, which included support from industry guest speakers.

Aligning the twelve ASC species standards into one global standard, the ASC Farm Standard brings greater consistency to requirements across all species standards.

Formally launching the Farm Standard, ASC CEO Chris Ninnes said that “sustainability is no longer a trend; it’s the undeniable future, unfolding now. With the population estimated to reach 10 billion by 2050, and with wild-caught fisheries at capacity, the importance of seafood farming will continue to grow, the environmental and social impacts of our industry must be addressed. That is why ASC is driven to accelerate that transformation, not least by championing farms and feed mills that are making Change.”

ASC director of Standards and Science Michiel Fransen said, “built on four pillars—fish, farm, people and planet—the standard empowers producers to meet regulatory and market demands, enhance farming practices and fish health, prioritise worker and community wellbeing, and protects biodiversity.”

Read the full article at Aqua Feed

Global seafood collaboration updates sustainability data, human rights analysis tool

January 28, 2025 –Amid a seafood sustainability landscape that features several databases, regulations, and benchmarks to measure progress, it can be difficult for retailers, fishers, and other players up and down the seafood supply chain to find consistent data on sustainability and align their processes accordingly.

Aiming to alleviate that issue, the Certification and Ratings Collaboration – a collaboration between some of the world’s most prominent seafood certification programs, including the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), Marine Stewardship Council, Fair Trade USA, and Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch Program – recently released an updated version of its data tool.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ASC’s Aquaculture Improver Program helping small-scale farmers bridge the certification gap

June 12, 2024– The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) has seen progress in its Aquaculture Improver Program (AIP), a project the council launched to help small-scale fish farmers meet the standards of certification criteria.

The program, originally announced in October 2018 but officially launched at the Global Shrimp Forum in September 2023, mainly focuses on small-scale shrimp farmers in Southeast Asia and Latin America and models itself similarly to how effective fishery improvement projects (FIPs) operate.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Op-ed: Human rights issues in the farmed seafood industry and the role of certification

April 23, 2024 — Chris Ninnes is CEO of the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) and previously served as deputy CEO and director of operations at the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC).

He has been chair of the ISEAL board since 2018 and chair of the Certification and Ratings Collaboration’s (CRC) Steering Committee since its inception in 2015. The Collaboration consists of the ASC, Fair Trade USA, MSC, Seafood Watch, and Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, working together to coordinate tools and increase impact so that more seafood producers move along a clear path toward environmental sustainability and social responsibility.

Ninnes’ op-ed was originally published on the ASC website.

The recent investigations uncovering human rights abuses in the farmed seafood industry, most recently in the shrimp industry in India, are very unsettling to read. While we all agree that these abuses should have no place in any industry, the reality is more stark and uncomfortable.

Human rights abuses can be found everywhere, and no system alone is perfect at eliminating all of them. The CRC’s data tool, which was originally developed to collate information about the environmental performance of seafood production from member assessments, now contains a global overview of key social metrics related to their occurrence. Shockingly, there is evidence of forced labor, child labor, or human trafficking within 65 percent of the countries assessed that are involved with 98 percent of seafood production. The frequency of these abuses differs by country, but such evidence is much harder to collect.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Op-ed: Seafood business action on human rights is essential

September 6, 2023 — Chris Ninnes is CEO of the Aquaculture Stewardship Council. Brad Spear is global policy director at Sustainable Fisheries Partnership. ASC and SFP are members of the Certification and Ratings Collaboration.

Around the world, seafood production supports more than 600 million livelihoods and feeds more than 3 billion people. Yet significant social responsibility challenges exist in the supply chains of wild-caught and farmed seafood products from around the world.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ASC now permits mills to apply for certification for feed standard

January 16, 2023 — The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) announced that, as of 14 January, feed mills can apply for its ASC feed standard certification.

The certification constitutes several legal, social, and environmental requirements for both mills’ operations, and for the suppliers of ingredients used in feed production.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ASC releases report on its progress toward UN Sustainable Development Goals

January 4, 2022 — The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) has released its first report on how it is contriuting to the responsible aquaculture portion of the United Nations Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The 17 SDGs make up the overall sustainability goals adopted by 193 U.N. member-states in 2015. Within each overarching goal, there are specific targets to achieve the 17 SDGs by 2030. The new report found more than 80 percent of the targets within all 17 SDGs are addressed by ASC.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Riverence, largest US trout farmer, achieves ASC certification

October 13, 2022 — The largest trout producers in the U.S. – Riverence Provisions LLC and Riverence Farms LLC – have achieved the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) certification.

Boise, Idaho-based Riverence Farms operates six grow-out farms primarily raising steelhead and golden rainbow trout, while Riverence Provisions is made up of eight grow-out farms raising rainbow trout. The eggs for these trout come directly from Riverence’s recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facilities in Washington state. Collectively, these companies produce more than 22 million pounds (10,000 metric tons) of fish annually and employ over 300 team members.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Seafood industry partnering with IDH to collect data on aquaculture’s CO2, water impact

June 1, 2022 — IDH, the Sustainable Trade Initiative, is a public-private partnership convener that has a history of driving sustainability initiatives in the seafood sector, including partnering with WWF to establish the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) in 2010. It also organized and continues to operate a program in China’s Hainan province to improve tilapia farmers’ incomes and make the sector more attractive to investors and insurers, in part by transferring knowledge and technology to farmers.

The IDH Aquaculture Program dates back to 2009, and more recently, the group created the IDH Aquaculture Working Group on Environmental Footprint, an initiative to investigate the environmental footprint of aquaculture globally. The initiative now includes Tesco, Thai Union, Wegmans, Hilton Seafood, and Marks and Spencer, among others.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Aquaculture Stewardship Council using new tech to combat seafood fraud

March 21, 2022 — Along with a new marketing campaign that will be the largest in its history, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council is also developing new technology to help it combat seafood fraud.

The new tech is under the umbrella of the ASC’s new campaign “The New Way to Seafood.” As part of the campaign, the ASC said, it is developing new “trace element fingerprinting,” digital tagging and tracing technology, and the implementation of chain of custody protocols.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

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