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The need for a holistic approach to responsible feed
May 27, 2025
Responsible seafood starts long before the farm—it starts with feed and the ingredients used to produce it. If we’re serious about making seafood farming more sustainable, we must take a holistic approach to risk-assessing feed ingredients.
“The ASC Feed Standard helps us de-risk our supply chains, aids answering questions from retailers, mitigates our impacts and provides commercial opportunities.” Adam Brennan, Chief Sustainability Officer at Thai Union
Why feed matters
Feed isn’t just an input—it’s a significant driver of aquaculture’s impacts. The aquafeed industry faces many interconnected challenges and carries multiple impacts.
Up to 80% of a seafood farm’s carbon footprint is in its feed, primarily from deforestation and land conversion to produce plant ingredients, and there are significant social risks including forced and child labour coming from these long and complex ingredient supply chains.
Feed is also a significant contributor to production cost at the farm level.
Addressing environmental and social risks down to raw material level
The ASC Feed Standard was carefully developed over several years by a group of experts comprising input from feed producers, retailers, NGOs, farmers and other stakeholders.
It requires that feed mills:
- Meet strict environmental and social requirements
- Source ingredients from responsible suppliers
- Use raw materials with a low risk for environmental and social impacts
It’s the first standard to take into consideration the impacts created across all key ingredient groups and across the entire ingredient supply chain, including the feed mills themselves and their raw material suppliers.
This includes all major agriculture crops such as wheat, corn and canola, in addition to soy and palm oil, plus marine ingredients. Requirements on reporting of performance improve assurances by creating unrivalled transparency throughout the entire aquafeed supply chain, reward environmental sustainability and social responsibility, as well as assisting future research into responsible feed.
Structure of the ASC Feed Standard
The ASC Feed Standard consists of five Principles:
- Principle 1 – The feed mill has a management system to implement the ASC Feed Standard, including operating legally, and in a socially and environmentally responsible manner
- Principle 2 – The feed mill sources ingredients responsibly
- Principle 3 – The feed mill accounts for eligible ingredients input and feed output
- Principle 4 – The feed mill sources marine ingredients responsibly
- Principle 5 – The feed mill sources plant ingredients responsibly
Each Principle defines a high-level outcome which, collectively, contributes to the ASC Vision.
Accelerating progress towards more sustainable seafood
The ASC Feed Standard:
- Sets a higher benchmark for responsible feed production and ingredient sourcing
- Ensures accountability from the feed mill back to its suppliers through transparency and traceability
- Empowers markets (including retailers and processors) to play a role in driving industry change
“The journey doesn’t end once mills are ASC feed certified – the movement to more responsible feed needs to be driven by the market, and it must be a value chain approach.” Jorge Diaz, Global Sustainability Manager at Skretting
When there is transparency of the ingredients (and their supply chains) used in feed, the farmed seafood sector has better visibility of their ‘upstream’ impacts.
With this knowledge, risks can be addressed and impacts reduced – from deforestation and land conversion, to overfishing, forced labour and more – benefiting ecosystems, workers, communities and consumers alike.
A deeper focus on plant ingredients
Whereas deforestation is the major environmental issue in soybean and palm oil production, for crops such as wheat and corn, the main problem is usually ecosystem/land conversion – for instance, grasslands rather than forests being converted into agriculture fields.
ASC requires other plant crops that are used in aquafeed to be assessed. This is very important because when it comes to the problem of ecosystem conversion, forests are not the only consideration.
In addition to risk assessments for illegal deforestation and land conversion, ASC requires all majority plant ingredients to be assessed for the risk of legal deforestation and land conversion. The difference between those impacts is significant as 30% of tropical deforestation due to agricultural conversion is considered legal, according to the laws of the country of production.
The audit process
Audits against the ASC Feed Standard follow strict process requirements and are only carried out by accredited Conformity Assessment Bodies (CABs). ASC is independent of this process and is not involved in the audit or certification decision.
As part of the ASC commitment to transparency, all findings, audit reports and certificates are publicly available on the ASC website.
Driving change, together
Feed mills certified against the ASC Feed Standard actively drive responsible and sustainable change in the aquaculture industry by:
- Addressing farmers’ demands and consumers’ concerns for responsible feed and responsibly farmed fish as an end product
- Demonstrating their commitment to continuous improvement in areas of environmental and social concern
- Actively contributing to protection from the negative impacts of feed ingredients
- Driving change for comprehensive positive environmental and social impact
Collaboration is key to meaningful and lasting change; the entire seafood value chain has a role to play. From ingredient suppliers, feed producers and farmers, to processors, retailers and food service providers – it’s time to change the narrative of responsible feed.
“Our commitment to ASC upholds Sainsbury’s high seafood sourcing standards, but also through the ASC Feed Standard, it supports sustainability goals by tackling deforestation and land conversion and reducing our Scope 3 emissions.” Dave Parker, Head of Aquaculture and Fisheries at Sainsbury’s
We can shift the entire industry toward sustainability—but only if we act together.
