ASC: Alignment Farm Standard

The ‘Alignment’ is an important milestone in delivering ASC’s mission to help transform the industry towards more sustainable and responsible aquaculture.

**Standard in development – ASC Farm Standard**

The alignment process will lead to a single farm-level standard. The aim is to provide greater consistency and harmonise requirements across all farmed seafood species currently targeted by ASC.

Currently, ASC manages a number of separate farm standards covering different species. They all provide industry-leading, robust environmental and social requirements, but because they have been developed at different times their requirements vary on some of the impacts that are common across aquaculture.

The aligned Farm Standard will cover all impact areas in one rigorous standard, which includes species-specific requirements where relevant. This alignment will also allow the ASC to more efficiently expand its reach (e.g. adding production systems or new species) and will facilitate the swifter update to specific metrics.

ASC Farm Standard – Principle 1

ASC Farm Standard – Principle 2

ASC Farm Standard – Principle 3

The ASC Farm Standard

Linked to the ASC Vision, the ASC Farm Standard addresses the key negative environmental and social impacts associated with the aquaculture industry. An ASC certified farm contributes to the ASC Vision by reducing, mitigating or eliminating such negative impacts.

The current ASC species Standards contain 7 Principles, the ASC Farm Standard will have 3 Principles setting effective and credible requirements. The Units of Certification (UoCs) will include various aquaculture production ‘Farm’ systems and some at ‘Processing’ level. The ASC Farm Standard will have production-system specific criteria (where needed/applicable) and species-specific metrics (where needed/applicable).

Principle 1 (P1): The UoC operates legally and applies effective business management.
Principle 2 (P2): The UoC operates in an environmentally responsible manner.
Principle 3 (P3): The UoC operates in a socially responsible manner.

An earlier draft of the Standard (Public Consultation II [March 14 – May 14, 2019]) focused on the ‘Legal’ (P1) and ‘Social’ (P3) Principles. That round ofpublic consultation also included that of revisions to the Certification and Accreditation Requirement (CARv2.2) document, which notably introduced a new Social Auditing Methodology (SAM) including a Social Risk Assessment tool. In 2021 two rounds of Public Consultation were conducted: half of the environmental elements (P2) went for consultation in spring, Fish Welfare went for consultation in the fall.

Contact person: Katherine Dolmage

Consultation best practice

ASC is the only aquaculture certification scheme to be ISEAL Code Compliant. ISEAL is a global membership association for credible sustainability standards whose members meet internationally accepted best practices.

ASC’s public consultations follow ISEAL’s Code of Good Practice for Setting Social and Environmental Standards, which stipulates that stakeholders have sufficient time and opportunity to provide input on the standard and can see how their input has been taken into account.

Next steps

The ASC Farm Standard will capture evolving best social and environmental aquaculture practices and be streamlined to ensure consistent auditing is possible. Feedback from all consultations is being used to adapt the proposals. The Farm Standard’s P1 and P3 requirements, covering legal and social indicators respectively, are part of the current public consultation, which runs until April 30^th 2022, and are due to be released in 2022. All P2 Criteria except for Fish Welfare elements are also part of the current public consultation, together with P1 and P3. Fish Welfare has been consulted on in September/October 2021. After all feedback has been collated and reflected upon, a final round of public consultation on the complete proposed P2 will take place in September 2022, with pilots running in parallel. The ASC Farm Standard is scheduled for release in 2023 and targeted to become operational in 2024.

Timeline

More information

[Page last updated on 01.03.2023]

Governance

Governance Documents

Terms of reference v1.1

Terms of reference Farm Standard v2.0

Documents

Consultation period:

19 August – 19 October 2016
Status: Closed

Public Consultation I

Documents

First Draft – ASC Harmonised Standard Key of the process;
Proposed & current indicators

Background papers

Introductory paper

FAQ ASC Harmonisation

ASC aligned Standard – Feedback form

Received Feedback

Feedback consultation 16 Aug 2016

Consultation period:

14 March – 14 May 2019
Status: Closed

Public Consultation II

Documents
ASC Farm Standard Public Consultation Draft 2019

ASC CAR Public Consultation Draft 2019

ASC Social Auditing Methodology Narrative Draft 2019

Annex F – Templates for social auditing

ASC Social Risk Assessment Calculator

Received feedback

Feedback of March-May 2019 consultation

Consultation period:

8 March – 7 May 2021
Status: Closed

Public Consultation III

Documents

ASC Farm Standard Public Consultation III (P2) Draft FAQ ASC Farm Standard (Principle 2)

Received feedback

Consultation period:

1 September – 31 October 2021
Status: Closed

Public Consultation IV (Fish Welfare Project)

Documents

Consultation Summary: Recommendations for Revised ASC Indicators on Fish Welfare

Consultation Document: Recommendations for Revised ASC Indicators on Fish Welfare

Consultation period:

1 March – 30 April 2022
Status: Closed

Public Consultation V

Key materials

Draft ASC Farm Standard (English, Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish, Vietnamese).
Consultation Survey (active in English, French, German, Japanese, to come in: Mandarin, Vietnamese).

Accompanying materials

Consultation survey offline pdf version (English, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish, Vietnamese)

FAQ (English, French, German, Spanish, Vietnamese, Mandarin)

Slides explaining the alignment project (English, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish, Vietnamese)

Slides explaining the proposal at criteria level (English, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish, Vietnamese)

ASC Farm Standards Comparison Tool

Supporting documents: Sea Lice 1 – Sea Lice 2 – Water Quality – Benthic Impacts – Critical Indicators

TWG and AAG documents

Received Feedback

Feedback of March-April 2022 consultation

ASC-Farm-Standard-PC-V-Summary-Report-JP.pdf

Full Feedback