Saving Seafood

Op-ed: Monitoring progress in small pelagic fisheries used for marine ingredients production key to aquaculture sustainability

September 17, 2025 — Robert Lefebure is the fisheries manager at MarinTrust, a program dedicated to the responsible sourcing, production, and traceability of marine ingredients.

Ensuring responsible management of the fisheries providing raw materials to the marine ingredients sector is critical to the FAO’s Blue Transformation Roadmap and the responsible development of the global aquaculture sector.

Small pelagic fisheries in particular are known for their dynamic stock status. They respond rapidly to changes in their environment and are both critical to the healthy functioning of ecosystems and supporting livelihoods. It is, therefore, important to recognize progress in driving responsible management of these fisheries. Such efforts require collaboration among a wide range of stakeholders: governments, local communities, industry, and NGOs.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

GSSI Welcomes MarinTrust

March 17, 2025 — The following was released by the Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative:

The Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative (GSSI) is pleased to welcome MarinTrust as an Affiliated Partner.

As the leading program for marine ingredient production factories, MarinTrust focuses on responsible sourcing, traceability, and ingredient-level production. Their focus on the responsible production of marine ingredients complements GSSI’s efforts to advance alignment and transparency across the broader seafood supply chain.

This affiliation brings together expertise from different parts of the supply chain to strengthen sustainability efforts from raw materials to final products. Both organizations are committed to responsible sourcing, robust benchmarking, and reducing duplication, ensuring confidence in the global seafood and feed industries.

Through this partnership, MarinTrust and GSSI will leverage their strengths to enhance sustainability, strengthen certification credibility, and broaden industry engagement on the role of marine ingredients. This collaboration helps clarify how different certification schemes interconnect while maintaining clear distinctions between marine ingredient production, feed standards, and seafood certification.

“We are delighted that MarinTrust is joining GSSI as an Affiliated Partner. I have no doubt that MarinTrust’s deep knowledge of the marine ingredient value chain will greatly complement GSSI’s scope and serve as the bridge linking fisheries and aquaculture. I expect this partnership to support MarinTrust’s efforts to increase the availability of certified marine ingredients by utilizing GSSI-recognised schemes.” Francisco Aldon, CEO at MarinTrust.

“It’s a pleasure to welcome MarinTrust as an Affiliated Partner. I’m confident that this partnership will help promote greater clarity, confidence, and choice at the feed level — a critical part of the value chain that deserves attention. While GSSI’s Global Benchmark Tool focuses on recognizing seafood certification schemes that meet internationally accepted sustainability criteria, MarinTrust works at the factory and ingredient level, certifying marine ingredient production facilities and their sourcing practices. This important distinction highlights the complementary roles our organizations play in supporting responsible sourcing and sustainability across the entire seafood and aquaculture supply chain.” Øyvind Ihle, CEO at GSSI.

MarinTrust, MSC sign agreement to strengthen collaboration in marine ingredient supply chain

December 16, 2024 — MarinTrust and the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in an attempt to streamline the certification processes between both organizations.

The agreement between MarinTrust, a London, U.K.-based certification program working to improve sourcing and traceability across global marine ingredient production, and the MSC is intended to improve how marine ingredient producers engage with one another, reducing duplicative tasks within both certification schemes and aligning standards across the sector.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

MarinTrust unveils its new marine ingredients standards

October 24, 2023 — Marine ingredient certification standard provider MarinTrust unveiled Version 3 of its standards for the responsible supply of marine ingredients.

MarinTrust said the new standard, debuted alongside IFFO – The Marine Ingredients Organisation’s annual conference in Cape Town, South Africa, lays the foundation toward a fully traceable marine ingredient supply chain with a focus on both environmental and social impacts – both at the factory and vessel level. The organization added the new standard also aims to increase accessibility to responsibly sourced and produced marine ingredients – and also encourages the use of byproducts in the creation of those ingredients.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

MarinTrust allowing remote audits, as Exalmar gains chain of custody certification

February 18, 2022 — Lima, Peru-based fishmeal and fish oil producer Exalmar has become the first company to achieve the MarinTrust chain of custody standard under its version 2.0 standards for further processing and trading activities.

“We are eager to meet the demands of international markets. Our commitment is from the capture of the raw material from responsible sources, processing and certified storage, for its safe and traceable commercialisation. This means assuring our customers the full traceability of all our fishmeal and fish oil,” Exalmar Commercial Manager Judith Vivar said.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

MarinTrust, GSA sign MoU to meet marine ingredient sustainability goals

November 5, 2021 — The Global Seafood Alliance, formerly Global Aquaculture Alliance; and MarinTrust, formerly IFFO RS; have signed a memorandum of understanding to work together and create an end-to-end assurance program for the global seafood value chain.

The MoU will see the two organizations cooperate on meeting a goal of having 75 percent of the world’s marine ingredients supplies – for products like fishmeal and fish oil – be either certified as sustainable, in an assessment, applying for certification, or a part of the MarinTrust Improver Program by 2025. The two organizations own collectively the MarinTrust Standard for Responsible Supply, MarinTrust Chain of Custody for Responsible Supply, MarinTrust Improver Program, Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) and Best Seafood Practices (BSP) certification programs.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

MarinTrust updates guidance for latest version of its Chain of Custody certification

May 11, 2021 — MarinTrust, the global marine ingredient standard for responsible supply (formerly IFFO RS), released updated guidance on 10 May for its Chain of Custody (CoC) Version 2 standard, which became effective as of 30 November, 2020.

In a press release, MarinTrust said it was extending the transition period “set up to help certification bodies as well as all facilities certified under the former version (known as v1.1), understand how the revised MarinTrust Chain of Custody Standard would affect their business.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Sustainability, communication and collaboration are key for the future of aquafeed

April 28, 2021 — The Marine Ingredients Organization (IFFO) hosted a webinar with all members of the organization with the latest insights from nearly 20 speakers on the global fishmeal and fish oil markets, in-depth country presentations and new research insights.

The panel looked at salmon and shrimp market trends. All panelists, from Allan Cooper (Vitapro S.A.) to Therese Log Bergjord (Skretting), Aisla Jones (Co-op), Odd Eliasen (Havsbrun) and Jonathan Banks, underlined that sustainability, transparency and communication with consumers are central to the future of aquafeed. Documented facts and figures on seafood’s carbon footprint, nutritional properties of fishmeal and fish oil and sustainable harvesting of fish stocks demonstrate aquaculture’s success story.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, a major shift has happened in the shrimp sector mainly, with some changes occurring also in the salmon industry. Supply chains have adapted to allow for a move to retail to be made. Digital transformation, through analytics, will be the way forward to improve service, traceability and feed efficiency.

Read the full story at Aquafeed.com

MarinTrust launches new verification tool for fishmeal plants

January 7, 2021 — A new verification tool from MarinTrust, the global marine ingredient standard for responsible supply (formerly IFFO RS), aims to help ensure value chain traceability via enhancing the recognition between Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and MarinTrust standards.

The tool offers clarity regarding the “requirements for all fishmeal plants claiming to be receiving MSC certified materials with the intention of using this for MarinTrust recognition,” the organization said in a press release.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

FRANCISCO ALDON: A decade on, and the marine ingredients industry standard continues to evolve

December 15, 2020 — Francisco Aldon is the CEO of MarinTrust, which recently celebrated its tenth anniversary.

Now over 10 years old, the MarinTrust standard (formerly IFFO RS) is no longer the new kid on the block. Entering Version 3.0, the standard continues to improve to reflect both the growing demands of the industry and customers, ensuring integrity and traceability of marine ingredients from start (fisheries) to finish (feed plants, cosmetics, nutraceuticals, and pet food sectors).  Having joined the standard at its birth, I know it has changed a lot and owes a great deal to all the stakeholders who have contributed to shaping it. The story goes on and the standard will continue to be a reflection of how the society is evolving.

The 2000s was a period of great excitement: free trade was becoming a tangible reality throughout the world. Globalization was on everyone’s lips and aquaculture was booming. There was a growing feeling that some guidance was needed, as people’s welfare and the future of natural resources were at stake. The FAO’s Code of Conduct for responsible fisheries, published in 1995, sent a decisive signal. MarinTrust was born from a need to reassure the aquaculture value chain about the origin and integrity of raw materials going into the production of fishmeal and fish oil. The industry’s trade body, IFFO, the Marine Ingredients Organisation, took the lead in facilitating an industry and NGO Technical Committee with the aim to develop an independent third-party standard. The first plant got its certification in February 2010, and by the end of the year, around 30 plants were certified. At that time, the certification covered the assessment of the fisheries management, the supply and processing of only whole fish and the recognition of third-party certification programs such as GMP+, FEMAS, and IFIS. We moved further up the value chain with the launch of the Chain of Custody (CoC) Standard in 2011, enabling the full traceability of certified marine ingredients from source to end user. This same year, we included by-products (heads, guts, and frames) as a new raw material source to produce certified marine ingredients, encouraging the responsible sourcing and utilization of this valuable ingredient, which otherwise would end up as waste.

Read the full story at Seafood Source