The Aquaculture Stewardship Council has made significant strides since its launch in 2010. Chief executive Chris Ninnes discusses its mission and strategy with Ben Cooper.
Sainsbury’s move to become the first major UK retailer to source River Cobbler certified by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) was described as an “important milestone” for the certification body launched by WWF and Netherlands ethical trade organisation IDH in 2010.
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However, this is by no means an isolated landmark for the organisation. In fact, such developments have been coming thick and fast since its launch and since the first certified products began to appear on the market towards the end of last year.
ASC chief executive Chris Ninnes describes the progress as “exceptional”.
Market expectations had been high leading up to the first products becoming available and uptake by retailers across Europe since then has been “very strong”.
The ASC covers 12 species groups including Pangasius, Tilapia, Salmon, Abalone, Bivalves, Trout, Shrimp and Seriola/Cobia. ASC-approved products are now available in more than 20 markets, including Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.
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By GlobalDataMarket uptake has followed a similar pattern to that seen by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and other certification programmes, Ninnes explains, with Europe leading the way. In the Americas, products were first launched in Canada but have recently been introduced in the US.
Ninnes also points to “strong interest” in Japan. “I’m sure we will see our first products launched there in 2013.”
Ninnes believes the pioneering work done by other certification bodies such as the MSC, Fairtrade and the Rainforest Alliance has helped the ASC to progress rapidly. The organisation is “slipstreaming behind the momentum that the MSC has created in the fish sector but also momentum created by other leading certification platforms”, which have “helped create an increasing awareness of these sorts of issues”.
To a degree this underlines just how far consumer markets in developed countries have travelled during the past decade with regard to sustainable trade.
“The MSC had to convince the market that sustainability around fish was an important issue,” says Ninnes. “We don’t have to do that to the same degree, so I think they ploughed the field for us already, and I think you can see that in the sort of uptake we’ve had.”
In fact, measured on a comparable timeline with the MSC, the ASC is already on the equivalent of the MSC’s “year nine”, he adds.
Ninnes should have a keen appreciation of the relative challenges facing the two organisations having been recruited from the MSC where he was deputy chief executive. He took up his post as ASC chief executive in October 2011.
Ninnes stresses that achieving high levels of awareness and industry uptake is vital for the ASC’s overall aims. The ASC “cannot have meaningful impact on the aquaculture industry as a niche player,” he says, adding that it is striving to account for “a substantial share of the global farmed output”.
Moreover, the ASC is not just looking at developed markets in Europe and the US. Building volume in the developing world, where much of the ASC-certified fish is produced, is also critical.
Building on a “solid base of support” across Europe and North America, ASC is seeking to expand in middle-income and emerging markets, Ninnes tells just-food. It is these markets that “hold the future for aquaculture” and the ASC “must have relevance” in these markets too in order to achieve its objectives. The longer-term objective is to “reach beyond the developed world to establish a presence in all key seafood producing and consuming countries worldwide”.
This aim speaks to the importance of a sustainable aquaculture sector in global food security terms. As the ASC points out, fish is generally a “healthier and more affordable” protein source than meat with a lower environmental impact. As the world population grows and the need for protein-rich foods increases, it is “of great importance that aquaculture can grow in a responsible manner”.
The ASC and its standards, which have their origin in the Aquaculture Dialogues initiated by WWF, in essence aim to define and certify how this food source can be produced sustainably.
The fact that the ASC was co-founded by WWF lends it considerable credibility as an organisation which takes into account the imperatives of commercial operators and the need for mass production and environmental concerns.
However, aquaculture has been a controversial area and the organisation has not been immune from criticism. Notably, in 2009 a group of some 70 NGOs wrote a letter expressing “outrage” at the WWF’s plans to launch the ASC. It said “plans to certify the industrial production of shrimp and salmon are influenced by the vested interests of the aquaculture industry, and do not reflect or take into account the wishes of local communities and indigenous peoples who live alongside shrimp and salmon farms”.
However, Ninnes points to the “impressive array of NGOs from throughout the world” who had participated actively in the development of the ASC standards, and the multi-stakeholder representation in the ASC’s governance structure. He also refutes the suggestion that sustainable aquaculture is a harder sell than the MSC found with wild-caught fish, pointing to “vociferous NGO opposition” that the MSC had sometimes encountered.
He says there will always be differences between what some campaigners consider to be sustainable and the views of the commercial operators, and organisations like the ASC will naturally find themselves in the middle. “I think it’s part of the natural tension of what a standard-setter is trying to do, and you’re sort of pulled in both directions.”
Nevertheless, support from the NGO sector is “pivotal”, he says. “In many ways the active engagement and support of NGOs is an independent credibility test. It is not just about engaging the commercial interests or the markets, we have to involve people that are concerned about the same issues that we’re trying to address.”
As can be seen in other certification programmes which have developed a significant market presence, there is a pragmatic emphasis within the ASC approach which has focused on developing a “best practice” standard. “That means we take existing best practice, capture that within a standard and look to drive the further adoption of best practices,” Ninnes explains. The idea is to derive a standard which is “stretching but achievable” and “create incentives to drive that change within the broader industry”.
