Feed Solutions
Feed Solutions ToolkitThe SFP Aquaculture Feed Solutions Toolkit can help your company tackle the climate change, habitat, and biodiversity risks associated with compound aquaculture feed and the many ingredients it contains.
- Aquaculture can meet increasing demand for seafood while offering a low-carbon alternative to other animal food products.
- However, aquaculture feed remains a significant climate change and environmental hotspot – with risks such as land conversion, deforestation, overexploitation, pollution, and bycatch from the production or capture of feed ingredients.
- Acting on these issues can help your company meet your Scope 3 climate-related targets, as well as those linked to environmental risks such as habitat loss and biodiversity decline.
Combined with continued improvements in planning and management, managing the risks of aquaculture feed can ensure that aquaculture provides a sustainable low-carbon protein source while preserving and restoring our natural ecosystems and biodiversity.
What is the Toolkit?
The SFP Aquaculture Feed Solutions Toolkit is your one-stop resource for tackling the climate change and environmental risks linked to aquaculture feed.
The Toolkit brings together tools, standards, initiatives, and platforms from multiple organizations. These tools highlight the latest advancements in mitigating the climate change and environmental risks that are linked to a diverse array of ingredients used in compound feed production.
The Toolkit also includes advice from the Accountability Framework Initiative (AFI) and its roadmap, as well as case studies to highlight examples of best practices in the industry.
Overview of Tool Types
The Toolkit includes several types of tools and resources to help you manage the risks of your aquaculture feed ingredients. Learn more about the different tool types below.
Developing clear company goals and commitments is the fundamental first step in establishing sustainable and ethical aquaculture supply chains.
Goals regarding aquaculture feed aim to safeguard natural ecosystems, biodiversity, and other environmental concerns. While social issues such as human and community rights are not the primary focus of this Toolkit, they can also be encompassed within these goals.
Company commitments and policies formalize these intentions into specific, time-bound actions and outcomes.
Use the Toolkit’s Commitments filter to access tools, organizations, advice, and case studies related to company goals and commitments, including those concerning feed ingredients.
To gain the most from this Toolkit, it is essential to know both the ingredients used in your aquaculture feed and the origins of those ingredients.
The major sustainability risks linked to feed typically occur at the sites of production or capture. Identifying the sources of various ingredients used in feed production is crucial for understanding associated risks and identifying areas for improvement.
Use the Toolkit’s Traceability filter to access tools, organizations, advice, and case studies focused on traceability within the seafood supply chain, including considerations regarding feed ingredients.
Once you have identified the sources of your feed ingredients, the next step is to assess whether they pose any climate change or environmental risks, and whether they align with your existing commitments. A risk assessment can help your company identify potential challenges and guide and prioritize actions.
Use the Toolkit’s Risk assessments filter to explore tools, organizations, advice, and case studies that help evaluate climate change and environmental risks associated with aquaculture feed and its ingredients.
Accepted, third-party standards can help your company provide greater assurance to customers that various risks, including climate change, environmental, and other concerns, have been addressed and that your sources are low-risk.
Use the Toolkit’s Standards filter to identify organizations that have established standards related to climate change and environmental risks.
The results of risk assessments can be used to inform the development and prioritization of improvements. SFP strongly recommends engaging in actions that address and improve any identified risks associated with your feed or feed ingredients, rather than switching sources.
Use the Toolkit’s Improvements filter to identify organizations, advice, and case studies geared toward mitigating climate change and environmental risks through pre-competitive, primarily sector-specific strategies.
Use the Toolkit’s Improvements – Landscape and jurisdictional approaches filter to find organizations providing guidance, support, or involvement in broader, cross-sectoral strategies.
Collecting data to evaluate progress, performance, and compliance enables your company to manage and track performance relative to sustainability commitments, market demands, or regulatory requirements.
This information can also inform your company’s decision-making and improvement processes and can be shared with buyers, investors, the public, and other stakeholders to demonstrate transparency and accountability and highlight performance.
Use the Toolkit’s Monitoring and reporting filter to identify organizations, advice, and case studies offering guidance or providing tools and platforms, including verification platforms.
Topics outside the scope of the Toolkit
- The Toolkit is a resource repository and is not a methodology, risk assessment, standard, or improvement initiative. It does not score or rank tools or organizations.
- The Toolkit is focused on the sourcing and selection of feed and its ingredients and excludes information on methods and technologies for more efficient feed application.
- While not specifically targeting reductions in the feed conversion ratio (FCR), crucial for efficient feed use and mitigating climate change and environmental impacts, the Toolkit connects users to tools incorporating FCR into their criteria, notably feed standards.
- The Toolkit centers on climate change and environmental risks but recognizes the critical importance of social issues such as impacts on communities, livelihoods, and forced labor. Many featured tools and organizations actively address these concerns alongside climate change and environmental risks.
Acknowledgments
SFP would like to thank IDH and the IDH Aquaculture Working Group on Environmental Footprint’s Secretariat, ThinkAqua, The Nature Conservancy, and representatives of other organizations for their review of the briefing that introduced the Toolkit. Their advice, feedback and suggestions of tools contributed to the Toolkit’s development.
The development of this Toolkit was made possible through funding by the Walmart Foundation. The contents of this Toolkit and support for its use are those of SFP alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Walmart Foundation.
Improve the sustainability of your feed
Contact SFP to learn more about how you can address the climate change and environmental risks associated with aquaculture feed and its ingredients.