Over the last few months ASC has been recruiting technical working group members to provide expert guidance on various topics to help develop the ASC Feed Standard.
A multi-stakeholder process
This inaugural meeting will bring together expertise in the fields of marine, plant, animal and micro ingredients; as well as supply chain and feed mill requirements.
Over two days the participants will get to grips with their task in developing the feed standard as they start the detailed discussions around the key environmental and social issues concerning feed production.
The technical working groups act under the supervision of a multi-stakeholder committee, which, as with the working groups, has a balance of industry and non-industry membership.
A standard for feed mills recognising responsible sourcing practices
The feed standard is for feed mills producing feed for aquaculture. As well as being applicable to farms seeking or holding ASC certification it could be used by other certification programmes.
Both GAA and GLOBALG.A.P. are actively involved in the development of this feed standard, along with feed manufacturers, retailers, farmers, IFFO and other commodity certifiers including MSC, RTRS and RSPO.
The ASC Feed Standard will enable aquaculture operations to source certified feed and will allow producers who can demonstrate their environmentally and socially responsible feed production methods to gain recognition for their efforts.
The ASC Feed Standard should be finalised by the end of 2015.
