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About ASC
Sustainable seafood means the world to us. That is why we are setting the standard for seafood farmed with care. We promote responsible seafood farming as a contributory solution in helping feed the world’s population with care for our planet and people.
Many of us enjoy eating fish. It’s healthy and nutritious — and an affordable protein for our world’s rapidly growing population.
Today, 33% of wild fish stocks have reached their biological limit, thus seafood from wild catch will not be able to feed the world’s growing population. That is why more than half of the fish eaten around the world now originates from seafood farming, and the share is predicted to increase. The rapid growth of aquaculture has led to badly managed fish farms, water pollution, damage to local environments and poor working conditions. A lot is at stake, given that seafood provides livelihoods and an affordable animal protein for billions of people, especially in developing countries.
That’s why it is more important than ever that seafood farming is done responsibly, with care for people and the planet.
Our mission at ASC is to transform the industry towards environmental sustainability and social responsibility.
In 2010, we launched the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) as an impact-driven NGO. We partnered with the Dutch Sustainable Trade Initiative IDH and WWF Netherlands to make aquaculture more sustainable. We do this by setting strict standards for seafood and farms and deliver high assurance throughout the supply chain.
To drive our third party certification and labelling programme for seafood farming worldwide, we work with the environmental and scientific community and beyond. Together, we develop standards with other NGOs, academics, farmers, retailers and experts. And we keep developing more standards to meet changing market needs and demand.
Our system has been evaluated against, and complies with, the ISEAL Code – a globally recognised framework that defines practices for effective and credible sustainability systems. As the global membership organisation for ambitious, collaborative and transparent sustainability systems, ISEAL drives collective efforts to tackle the most pressing sustainability issues and create a world where markets are a force for good. Playing in line with this code, we’ve become the world’s leading farmed seafood certification programme from farm to fork.
We make an impact at every step, from water quality, responsible sourcing of feed, disease prevention, animal welfare, to fair treatment and pay for workers to maintaining positive relationships with local communities. Only after they pass the audit, a farm’s seafood can be sold in retail stores with the ASC label on pack. It lets consumers know they’ve made the most trusted seafood choice produced with care for people and our planet. Every package of ASC labelled seafood is traceable back to ASC certified farms. Then we reinvest income from ASC certified products and charitable donations to promote responsible seafood farming.
Today, ASC labelled seafood is already available for consumers in more than 90 countries, thanks to the uptake of ASC with producers and businesses around the globe. But this is just the start. Every day, we work on further improvement of our certification programme and innovations beyond just certification. This is how we can continue to deliver proven, measurable and meaningful impact on people and our planet.
What we do
Together with our partners, the ASC runs an ambitious programme to transform seafood farming globally and promote the best environmental and social aquaculture performance towards environmental sustainability and social responsibility.
Our aim
A world where aquaculture plays a major role in supplying food and social benefits for humanity whilst minimising negative impacts on the environment.
How we do it
Transforming seafood farming towards environmental sustainability and social responsibility using market mechanisms, improvement incentives and value-add services from farm to fork.
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