Aquafeed Initiative (Earthworm Foundation)
France
Introduction
Earthworm Foundation is a non-profit organization built on values and driven by the desire to positively impact the relationship between people and nature.
What is it?
The Aquafeed Initiative is a collective ambition to shift the French market towards aquaculture using responsibly sourced aquafeed ingredients.
Composed of eleven French companies, it represents a pre-competitive working group, coordinated by Earthworm Foundation, to collectively work on making farmed fish feed in their supply chains more responsible with an initial focus on the salmon sector.
Its goal is to limit the ecological and social impact of aquafeed ingredients, in particular by reducing the use of fish meal and fish oil from forage fish, and a reliance on West African fisheries, to have 100% certifiable marine ingredients, and improving the management of fisheries. In addition, soy must not be sourced from land connected with deforestation or conversion. It also covers research into alternative and circular ingredients.
Indicators have been created under the following collective objectives for sustainable aquafeed, to measure progress:
- Decreasing the reliance on reduction fisheries;
- Improving the sustainability of reduction fisheries; and,
- Ensuring the sustainability of soybean supplies.
The Initiative is open to any type of company (distributors, processors, farmers or feed manufacturers) aligned with these values, as long as they share the collective objectives.
Following the initial focus on farmed salmon, the intention is to adapt and apply these objectives (and indicators) to other farmed species (trout, sea bass, sea bream, shrimp) under different timeframes.