The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) is the world’s leading certification scheme for farmed seafood. In 2022, the total global production of ASC certified seafood amounted to 1.55% of the global aquaculture production. Our findings show that ASC can meaningfully address most of the industry’s global challenges. We demonstrate this through alignment with a significant proportion (49%, or 82/169) of all Sustainable Development Goal targets; with more than 80% of those considered to be ‘well’ or ‘very well’ addressed. Compliance with the ASC Standards helps to reduce farm’s environmental footprint, conserve natural resources and contribute to worker’s well being.
During our stakeholder survey in 2022, it was shown that stakeholders recognise key benefits delivered through ASC: the logo provides assurance that ASC delivers a good product, ASC serves as a catalyst for improved production processes and opens doors to new customers and markets. 84% of respondents find these benefits to be very valuable and 80% of the respondents believe ASC is achieving its mission. ASC is the most recognised certification scheme for farmed seafood. Consumer awareness of our ASC label is significantly higher than similar programmes in many key markets.
Looking forward, there is interest for expanding our scope to multiple catfish species, namely: Clarias gariepinus; Heterobranchus bidoralis; Ictalurus punctatus; Hybrid of Heterobranchus longifilis X Clarias gariepinus. According to the FAO, the genus Clarias spp. accounts for 2.3% of the total fish production in 2020 and it is a fish species with a remarkable potential for the development of freshwater aquaculture. Catfish also has a high commercial interest especially in North America and Asia. Catfish and its hybrids are therefore gaining importance worldwide.
All these species seem to have competitive profit margins for large-scale production which is leading farmers to opt for more intensive aquaculture practices with associated social and environmental risk as well as risks for the fish welfare. These risks will be covered by the implementation of the ASC Farm Standard with species-specific indicators. Thus, the ASC sees an urgent need to include these species in the portfolio to actively address major concerns and issues.
Our goal is to involve relevant stakeholders in the content development, especially regarding metric setting. The catfish industry is an important contributor of the US economy; therefore, the inclusion of American catfish farmers is fundamental in this project. Farmers also benefit from this as ASC certification allows them to drive additional revenue and income though access to global and local market demand. This is the next step to bring responsible catfish on our consumers’ tables!