ASC

The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) is an international non-profit organisation that was established in 2010 by the WWF (World Wildlife Fund) and The Sustainable Trade Initiative. It is the world’s leading certification scheme for farmed seafood and the ASC label only appears on food from farms that have been independently assessed and certified as being environmentally and socially responsible.

Advantages:

The ASC mission is to transform aquaculture towards environmental sustainability and social responsibility using efficient methods to create value in the entire feed to food value chain. The ASC standards cover principles such as preservation of natural habitats, local biodiversity, ecosystems, wild population, and water resources, responsible use of feed and other resources, improved fish health and controlled and responsible use of antibiotics and chemicals, and social responsibility. It further covers all production types; recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) and flow-through systems. Each species of fish has its own standard.

ASC and Aller Aqua

Fish feed produced at Aller Aqua is compliant with principle 5 in the ASC Freshwater Trout standard. It is also possible to be compliant with principle 4 in the ASC Salmon standard. These principles concern environmentally efficient and responsible utilization of resources, including:

• Traceability and transparency of raw materials in feed

• Responsible origin of marine raw materials (including the use of wild fish for feed)

• Dependency of wild-caught marine ingredients in feed (the source of the marine raw materials)

• Responsible origin of non-marine raw materials in feed

Traceability and transparency in raw materials for feed

For documentation of specific requirements for traceability for feed ingredients, Aller Aqua has chosen the mass balance principle. Mass balance documents the amount of purchased raw materials with the amount of feed sold. In addition, we provide information about all raw materials which constitute more than 1% of the weight of the feed.

Responsible origin of marine raw materials

Requirements state that all fishmeal and fish oil used in feed stems from ISEAL accredited fisheries such as MSC and IFFO-RS certified processing. Recognizing that this is not a viable possibility a number of alternatives are provided. Aller Aqua has chosen Fish Source score, which is calculated for marine raw materials used in the feeds. This dispensation from 100% ISEAL-certification is temporary and awaits a new complete ASC-feed standard.

Dependency of wild-caught marine ingredients in feed

To determine our dependency ratio for marine raw materials we carry out a calculation that provides a number, which we can then monitor over time. Like other fish feed producers, we strive to reduce our dependency on marine raw materials and to find great alternatives to these valuable raw materials.

Responsible origin of non-marine raw materials in the feed

Aller Aqua has a documented responsible sourcing policy for feed ingredients.
This requires that 100% of all ingredients based on soy should be certified RTRS (Round Table on Responsible Soy Production).