Protocol establishment on seafood through ASC certification in Greek aquacultures

The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) is an international non-profit organization that maintains a policy on farmed seafood thus maintaining sustainable aquaculture. It offers a strict certification and marking scheme for safe and responsible aquaculture suppliers ensuring consumers that the seafood they buy is environmentally friendly and socially responsible. The ASC standards resulted from the WWF-initiated Aquaculture Dialogues, a multi-stakeholder series of dialogs that took place over the course of a decade involving about 2,000 scientists, NGOs, industry participants and other stakeholders. The ASC has standards for the 12 species which follow: abalone, bivalves, freshwater trout, pangasius, salmon, seriola and cobia, shrimp, and tilapia.
Two aquacultures, run by Nireus, in Greece have accredited to the ASC 's new Seabass, Seabream, and Meagre Level on 5 June 2019. The program was extended in response to stakeholder demand for an ASC standard for seabass, seabream and meagre, which customers in European markets have historically enjoyed. The new standard is based on a combination of measures from the current multi-stakeholder standards of ASC and additional metrics developed to resolve the unique impacts of seabass, seabream, and meagre in agriculture.
This practice is related to Activity “A3.2 Interregional workshop on promoting relevant EU labels” of the EXTRA-SMEs project.