4.4 Other partnerships

Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC)

Established in 2010, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) is arguably the most stringent, robust and credible environmental and social standard in the farmed seafood sector. Currently, over 1.85 million tonnes of farmed seafood have been independently certified to be in compliance with the standard.

Nutreco's Corporate Sustainability Director Jose Villalon continues to sit on the Supervisory Board of ASC and is a member of the Governance Committee. Nutreco and Skretting representatives have been engaged as Steering Committee stakeholders or as Chair or Director of the council’s Supervisory Board since 2004 (pre-ASC standards development). At Nutreco, we are very proud of our role in the start-up and ongoing governance of ASC.

During 2020, ASC completed its first ever Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) report, which used thousands of data points made possible by the ASC requirement that all farm audit data is made public. Among the report’s findings and case studies, it was revealed that ASC shrimp farms increased their ongoing compliance to the environmental performance requirements by 50% between 2014 and 2018.

Meanwhile, the ASC biennial consumer survey reminded us of the growing desire of consumers to do their part and requiring credible solutions they can trust, with over 70% of consumers around the world believing claims about sustainability should be independently verified.

In December, as part of ASC’s drive for continuous improvement, greater opportunity was provided for stakeholders such as local communities and NGOs to contribute to decisions on Variance Requests (VRs), which provide the necessary means to adapt a global standard to specific local conditions without lowering requirements. 

2021 will see the start of a public consultation for a new ASC Aligned Standard (applicable to all ASC species), aimed at benefiting farmers with a more efficient and consistent approach, while retaining the robust ASC requirements.

MarinTrust

Skretting’s sustainability manager, Trygve Berg Lea, has been involved/associated with MarinTrust (formerly IFFO- RS) for more than a decade. In this time, great strides have been made by the aquaculture industry to improve its responsible practices with substantial efforts focused on encouraging marine ingredient suppliers to ensure that they source raw materials from well-managed, sustainable fisheries.

MarinTrust has become the leading independent business- to-business certification programme to produce marineingredients. Skretting has supported the MarinTrust programme from the very beginning in 2009 and Skretting Sustainability Manager Trygve Berg Lea is a member of the MarinTrust governance board.

The main purpose of the standard is:

• To ensure that whole fish used come from fisheries managed according to the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries.

• To ensure no illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishery raw materials are used.

• To ensure pure and safe products are produced under a recognised Quality Management System, thereby demonstrating freedom from potentially unsafe and illegal materials.

• To ensure full traceability throughout production and the supply chain.

Collaborative Soy Initiative (CSI)

The Collaborative Soy Initiative (CSI) is a framework of soy stakeholders who have the will to collaborate to accelerate the efforts of building sustainable soy supply chains. The vision is to reach 100% deforestation, conversion-free sustainable soy. Its mission is: (1) to inform about the actions that are on-going; (2) to facilitate the synergies between stakeholder initiatives and actions; and (3) to come up with new actions.

The achievements of the CSI include:

  • Organisation of free information webinars on topics as ‘Land Use Change and Soy’, ‘EU taxonomy and soy’, and ‘Deforestation and conversion free soy: how to collaborate better’.

  • Organisation of in-depth exchange meetings with 15 of the most relevant regional and global soy initiatives. The outcome of the meetings was the identification of the fields of intensive collaboration, aiming to scale up and mainstream the transition towards a sustainable soy supply chain, in terms of volume, area and speed.

  • The publishing an archive of actions and initiatives on the CSI website and setting the first steps for a more into depth Information Hub, a publicly-available digital platform allowing different users to find in user-friendly way, the soy supply chain information to fulfil their needs.

European Feed Manufacturers’ Federation

Nutreco is a member of the European Feed Manufacturers’ Federation (FEFAC) Sustainability Committee, which meets four times a year in Brussels to address sustainability initiatives associated with the European feed industry.

A positive outcome of this committee’s work during 2020 was the revisions and updating of the FEFAC Soy Purchasing Guidelines (scheduled to be publicly launched in February 2021).