The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) has welcomed four new members to its Supervisory Board.
Among those inducted are Aldin Hilbrands, Meghan Jeans, Scott Nichols and Ling Cao. All new board members bring a range of talent and expertise to ASC, according to the organization’s CEO, Chris Ninnes.
“I’m excited that Ling, Scott, Aldin and Meghan have joined the board of the ASC,” said Ninnes. “We look for talented, exceptional individuals to expand our capacity to provide an effective programme for responsible aquaculture and we are fortunate to have found four outstanding additions to our board.”
Hilbrands serves as the Technical Director of FSSC 22000, an agency created by the Foundation for Food Safety Certification to help businesses effectively manage food safety issues. He is also the Director of Aquaculture with IDH, the Sustainable Trade Initiative. By working with Royal Ahold in the past, Hilbrands has sat on several boards throughout his career for organizations such as Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and Global Seafood Sustainability Initiative (GSSI).
The Director of Conservation at the New England Aquarium in Boston, Massachusetts, Meghan Jeans, J.D., is an overseer for seafood sustainability, ocean policy and marine protected area management. Jeans also works as an advisor to the Fair Trade USA, the International Sustainable Seafood Foundation (ISSF) and the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). In her previous positions, Jeans directed the Fisheries Leadership and Sustainability Forum at Stanford University. She is a storied environmental lawyer who has operated alongside fisheries and marine wildlife conservation for Ocean Conservancy, the Marine Fish Conservation Network, the Conservation Law Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Scott Nichols holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Metabolism, and is the founder of Food’s Future, a consultancy dedicated to providing economically and environmentally sustainable food for an expanding world. Prior to founding Food’s Future, Nichols worked at DuPont, where he led the project to develop Verlasso, a new brand of farmed salmon produced with a low dependence on forage fisheries, developed in a joint project with AquaChile. The salmon from Verlasso became the first ocean-raised farmed fish of its kind to earn a “Good Alternative” ranking from Seafood Watch.
Last but not least, Ling Cao serves as a Research Scholar at the Stanford University Woods Institute for the Environment. A trained agronomist and environmental scientist, Ling focuses on interdisplinary research at the interface between the sustainability of food and natural systems. Ling’s dissertation quantitatively assessed the sustainability of emerging shrimp farming systems and technologies, with a focus on applying these results to producers and consumers in China and the U.S., noted ASC.
“Their expertise will be an enormous advantage in our mission to transform the aquaculture industry. The combination of academic, industry and global business insights they bring will be key to our ongoing efforts to meet the growing demand for responsibly farmed fish, and to communicate the value of our certification programme,” concluded Ninnes about the new board members.
