The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA) and GLOBALG.A.P. came together at Seafood Expo Global to develop the next steps towards achieving efficiencies across the three programmes, following on from the MoU signed at last year’s event.
Last year the three organisations identified and published common requirements on responsible sourcing of fishmeal and fish oil across the programmes’ standards. More recently, GAA and GLOBALG.A.P. have taken up an active role in ASC’s work on developing its feed standard, which will lead to ASC certified feed which can be used by farms seeking or holding ASC certification.
GAA and GLOBALG.A.P., which already have operational feed standards, are taking part in the ASC Feed Dialogue steering committee meetings (as observers) and are actively participating in the technical working group on marine ingredients.
The ASC feed standard should be ready by the end of 2015. The involvement of GAA and GLOBALG.A.P. will promote further common elements across the three programmes to benefit the feed industry and suppliers of raw materials.
Also underway is the comparison of the three organisations’ standards with the aim of identifying commonalities. Initially, the focus is on pangasius, with other species to be added later on.
“We will not stop our efforts until we have published a single set of criteria and language that can be used to demonstrate compliance with all elements addressing the same aspects in the three standards,” said Kristian Moeller, Managing Director of GLOBALG.A.P. “Duplication of control points shall become history!”
