As Chinese consumers embrace sustainable seafood, aquaculture producers follow suit
Over the past two years, three new standards for species classifications have been released, the result in part of growing awareness of sustainable seafood in China in particular.
The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) recently launched new standards for two classifications of fish: tropical marine finfish and flatfish, signifying that the sustainability movement may be permeating the Asian market.
Markets like Singapore and Hong Kong are important for the species groups, CEO Chris Ninnes told IntraFish, particularly in live trading. The markets for these new species are covered more broadly across the tropics and subtropics, Asia, Australia and the Austral-Pacific.
"The level of awareness towards sustainability has grown over the last 20 years," Ninnes said. "When you look back to the early days, the uptake of certification was a very challenging process and the discussions about certification were quite hostile in many situations, but lo and behold over the years we've seen an uptake in Europe and other markets. And I think that journey continues."
Farmed production of flatfish species like turbot has been overtaken by production in China and Ninnes expects there will be uptake for certified fish in most of the major cities and primary sector cities in the country.
China has been taking steps towards sustainability in recent years, but mainly coming from government initiatives driven by an increased need towards resource management, a seafood executive with expertise in emerging markets told IntraFish.
That trend toward sustainability is creeping more and more into the production side as well.
"I think that definitely some of the bigger Chinese companies will have an interest in being certified sustainable," the source said. "You can see new technology coming in, like recirculation farming and off-shore farming. The technology is seen as an option for growth. And if you invest a tremendous amount of money in big technology, then you also want to be able to sell a premium product."
But barriers mainly come from the consumers and at this point, certification practices remain a process of trust-building.
The new standards for tropical marine finfish in particular have been in the works for a long time; the dialogue initiated by the WWF Coral Reef Triangle program in 2013 but involved several new stakeholders not previously involved with the ASC.
Time is a consequence of the ASC's broadened interests, Ninnes said. The actual aquaculture production systems for some of the species are still in earlier stages of development, but increased market interest from stakeholders moved the process along.
Last year, the ASC added seabass and seabream to its standards, addressing a growing demand in markets such as Japan, the Middle East and North America: 85 percent of seabass and sea bream production occurs in the Mediterranean.
In 2018, tropical marine finfish farmed production accounted for almost 3.7 million metric tons of global aquaculture production, according to the ASC. Main areas of production include China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, whereas flatfish production occurs mainly in Korea, China, Spain, Portugal and Japan.
Rather than making new developments, upcoming ASC initiatives will focus on re-assessing the present standards.
"By and large we are looking to put more of our efforts into the big picture alignment project," Ninnes said. "What we would like to do is align our content so that we have more consistency across the board on what is an ASC standard."