Sustainable Seafood Coalition (SSC)

What is it?

The Sustainable Seafood Coalition (SSC) is a pre-competitive improvement initiative whose members represent all sectors of the seafood supply chain. Its vision is that all seafood sold is from sustainable sources. The SSC has four strategic aims:

1. To publish the SSC Codes of Conduct which reflect good practice and latest developments in sourcing and labeling practices, for implementation by all members.
2. To support members to effectively implement their commitments to the SSC Codes of Conduct, through the provision of guidance, capacity building, and knowledge sharing.
3. To participate in advocacy and engagement activities to influence wider changes in policy and practices relevant to the SSC Codes of Conduct.
4. To provide a forum for collaboration, innovation, and development of consistent approaches across the industry on themes related to sustainable seafood.

The SSC Codes of Conduct are voluntary agreements on responsible sourcing and labeling, developed by SSC members.

For farmed fish (aquaculture), members need to ensure that the source is certified to an environmental third-party responsibility standard or has been audited to a good aquaculture standard or code of practice.

This will include an assessment of:

• Legality: regulatory controls and compliance;
• Farm site management practices;
• Wider environmental impacts of farming activity; and
• Marine feed ingredient sources.

• Members should take measures to avoid both fish and marine ingredients for fish feed, that are likely to have been sourced from illegal fishing activities or derived from threatened, endangered, or protected (ETP) species.
• Members should ensure that suppliers also have robust traceability and risk assessment protocols in place. For farmed seafood, this includes traceability of the marine ingredient components of fish feed to the source fishery or the feed processing factory.
• Examples of traceability compliance are provided in two ISO standards ‘Traceability of finfish products’ for wild capture and farmed fish (12875:2011 and 12877:2011, respectively) and members may wish to refer to those.