The Sustainable Shrimp Partnership (SSP) is celebrating its fifth anniversary since beginning its work to transform the global shrimp aquaculture industry.
In 2018 a group of shrimp producers in Ecuador, mindful of neglectful practices, committed to improving the sector by encouraging more socially and environmentally responsible practices.
“When we established SSP five years ago, we wanted to drive change globally,” explained SSP director Pamela Nath.
“We consider SSP as an innovation lab where we tackle specific challenges, learn how to address them and share our experience. We set the bar high for ourselves to demonstrate by example and to lead these changes. We call this a race to the top,” she added.
A key component of SSP’s ‘race to the top’ is one of the most demanding protocols for shrimp production – the SSP qualification. Developed under guidance from the World Wildlife Fund, the Sustainable Trade Initiative and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), the qualification ensures that all farms meet the ASC certification.
Traceability is crucial to sustainability and SSP has joined the IMB Food Trust, a platform pioneering blockchain technology, developing an application for consumers to allow them to trace their shrimp from farm to plate.
Collaboration is key too and SSP is joining forces with international organisations under its Sustainability Leadership Roundtable programme to anticipate future challenges and ways to overcome them, particularly supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises under the Scale Up programme.
The next edition of the Shrimp Summit, an event organised together with ASC, will take place on 12 – 14 June.
