The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) announced a project to combine its eight farm standards into one core ASC standard. The council plans on harmonizing criteria where possible while maintaining species’ or production method specific requirements where needed.
The project was launched this week and reviews the current ASC farm standards to identify commonalities across them. The core standard will cover generic requirements. Species- or production-specific requirements will be covered in elated annexes.
“The current standards cover the 12 most commercially traded species’ groups,” said Bas Geerts, ASC Standards Director. “However, to truly deliver on our vision more species need to be included as soon as reasonably possible. With one core standard it will be much more efficient to expand to include other species.”
Combining standards will also shorten the time to get certified products of new species to market, Geerts said. “In addition, based on our two and a half years of real life experience with the standards, we have identified improvement areas for species we currently cover, most importantly ensuring a more consistent approach across species.”
“Overall, we would expect the whole process to be more effective and more efficient in the future. And this will enable us to further stimulate positive change in the global aquaculture sector in a clear and consistent manner,” he said.
