SALMON LEADS WAY IN TRANSPARENT REPORTING

Salmon leads way in transparent reporting – At the Seeds&Chips Global Food Innovation Summit in Milan, Italy, the Global Salmon Initiative (GSI) released its annual Sustainability Report, providing 6 years’ of data across 14 key indicators – 9 environmental and 5 social – for 14 of the world’s leading salmon farming companies.

Speaking from Seeds&Chips, GSI Convenor Avrim Lazar commented: “Current food models need deep and rapid change, and this will not be achieved if we only work as individual companies, one issue at a time.

What we need is systemic change across entire sectors. This kind of change at speed and scale is being achieved by the Global Salmon Initiative.

The GSI model puts companies environmental efforts into a pre-competitive space, collectively setting very ambitious goals, committing to radical transparency and freely sharing solutions between them. The result is significant environmental improvement for the whole sector.

Today’s launch of the 6th Sustainability Report documents that progress across many of the industry’s key sustainability metrics.”

The report, which includes data for all 14 GSI members, across 8 regions, accounting for more than half of global production, demonstrates a number of long-term positive trends, which are a result of the group’s continuing focus on industry innovation and best-practice sharing, in regard to environmental improvements.

“Transparency is a key component in driving change. By being transparent we are saying we are here for the long-term. We acknowledge improvements are still needed, and through transparency we are being open and truthful with ourselves and our stakeholders about our continuous journey in ensuring farmed salmon is a healthy and sustainable protein option for the future,” added Lazar.

GSI is one example of industry leadership being highlighted at today’s Seeds&Chips Summit, which is showing that by bringing together industry stakeholders, we can speed up the critical changes needed to restructure global food systems to meet increasing needs and changing ecosystems.
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“If we are to respond to changing demands from both consumers and the planet, we need to innovate,” added Lazar. “What we have learned from the GSI is that through greater transparency and by being open to collaboration, when it comes to environmental performance we were able to identify areas where innovation is most urgently needed.

Then through the collective power of the group, we have the means to mobilize and initiate the further advancement of novel ideas – something we have observed has real impact when it comes to disease management and improving feed efficiencies, both areas where the report shows significant progress.”

Speaking with Mowi CEO and GSI Co-Chair Alf-Helge Aarskog, he added: “As we share the 6th year of sustainability data, it is interesting to see that the areas we identified as priority for the GSI to work on (biosecurity, sourcing of sustainable feed and independent certification) and the areas showing greatest progress in the report are the same.

Clearly this shows that if we focus and coordinate efforts we can have a significant impact on improving environmental performance.”

“As consumers start to make more informed choices on what to eat, farmed salmon not only offers a healthy choice, but also cements itself as one of the most eco-efficient and responsible protein options available,” noted Lazar. “The task now is how we continue to maintain this profile as the industry grows. Ongoing transparency and collaboration will undoubtedly play crucial roles.”

• Farmed salmon continues to be one of the most eco-efficient forms of animal protein production – with the lowest carbon footprint, lowest feed conversion ratio, and lowest land use

• Over 620,000 tons of GSI farmed salmon are now Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) certified from over 185 farms worldwide, and represent almost 60% of total GSI members’ production

• In analysing 6 years of data, a number of positive trends can be identified:

A 50% decrease in the use of sea lice treatments, coupled with a 120% increase in use of non-medicinal methods – technological advancements and best-practice sharing have facilitated this move to a more holistic approach to sea lice management

The amount of fishmeal and fish oil in feed reduced by 17% and 9% respectively, resulting in an overall 11% decrease in the use of marine ingredients in feed – due to innovations in the sourcing of feed ingredients