In a significant development for the organic food market, the Soil Association, the UK’s organic standards organisation, has given its full backing to organic aquaculture.
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The organisation said it had spent eight years developing “the most rigorous aquaculture standards and assessing every aspect of UK farmed fish production”.
Although the Soil Association’s aquaculture standards have had full organic status from the Government’s Advisory Committee on Organic Standards (ACOS) since 1998, the association’s own governing body had demanded standards beyond these levels and greater clarity on the potential impacts of fish farming. So the standards had been held in ‘interim’ status by the Soil Association, and it has now removed this ‘interim’ qualification.
“The Soil Association has followed a responsible and pragmatic path to bringing aquaculture fully into the organic fold,” said Soil Association Scotland director Hugh Raven . “As with land-based organic farming, the Soil Association’s aim is to achieve the most sustainable production for aquaculture.
“We now embark on a major programme of continuing work to develop the standards further – focusing on priorities such as sustainable fish feeds, moving away from potentially polluting veterinary treatments, and farming multiple species of fish, sea-weed and crustaceans to minimise nutrient losses – replicating the diversity of cropping and species found on land-based organic farms.”
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By GlobalData
