Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) – Feed Standard
Global
What is it?
The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) is an independent, international non-profit organization that manages a leading certification and labeling program for responsible aquaculture.
Together with their partners, they run a program to transform seafood farming globally and promote the best environmental and social aquaculture performance towards environmental sustainability and social responsibility.
- Align feed to farm greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting data with the new ASC Farm Standard requirements, and;
- Align with new EU deforestation legislation requirements.
- Exception to indicator 2.2.9 to permit sourcing of identified medium risk ingredients for use in non-ASC aquafeeds and as non-eligible ingredients in ASC Mass Balance production model feeds, pending the following criteria:
- ‘Medium risk’ as demonstrated by Principle 2 Due Diligence Pathway 1 (Country Risk Scorecard), Pathway 2 (Sector Assessment), and Pathway 3 (Ingredient manufacturer Assessment)
- This would be for a limited time (three years from standard effective date), after which only Low Risk would be acceptable again.
- Modification to mass balance eligible volume calculation to require a minimum volume sourcing requirement for Category 1 plant materials.
- Marine ingredients should be increasingly sourced from responsibly managed (MarinTrust and MSC) fisheries, improving the sustainability level of whole-fish ingredients over time via a sustainability ladder mechanism, covered in ASC Feed Standard Principle 4.
- ASC-certified feed mills are also committed to transitioning towards a deforestation and land-conversion-free supply chain, covered in ASC Feed Standard Principle 5.
- Also as part of Principle 5, mills must either source soy, palm oil, and plant ingredients from Low Risk supply chains or have a public commitment to achieve Low Risk with an action plan, milestones, and target date (in accordance with the Accountability Framework Initiative).
- Legal – The risk that primary raw material originates from areas affected by poor regulatory oversight resulting in either systematic illegal fishing within the fisher for marine-based ingredients or systematic violations of land use or environmental laws and regulations for plant-based ingredients.
- Social – The risk that primary raw material is produced using forced labor or worst forms of child labor for both marine and plant-based ingredients.
- Environmental – The risk that primary raw material originates from unreported or unregulated fishing, species that are IUCN endangered or critically endangered species, and species caught that appear in the CITES appendices for marine-based ingredients; or originates from areas resulted from illegal deforestation/conversion for plant-based ingredients. Plant-based ingredients used by the UoC also need to be assessed for their level of risk related to (legal) deforestation and land conversion.
What is it?
The ASC Feed Standard certifies feed mills producing aquafeeds. It adopts a holistic approach addressing environmental, legal and social responsibility within the feed mill and throughout its ingredient supply chain in the form of due diligence. Feed mills apply this due diligence to all aquafeed ingredients >1% inclusion.
The ASC Feed Standard was launched in June 2021, and feed mills were able to apply for certification in January 2023. The standard is applied to both the feed mill itself and the ingredients it uses.
ASC Feed Standard V1.1 was released on 1 May 2025. Supported by feedback collected in targeted partner consultations, V1.1 of the Standard was subject to an urgent revision and will no longer come into effect. It will be directly superseded by ASC Feed Standard V1.2.
V1.2, released 19 December 2025, is effective and mandatory on 2 February 2026.
The substantive changes as announced for V1.1 will still be implemented to:
The additional substantive changes for V1.2 cover required due diligence outcomes for primary raw materials under Principle 2 and mass balance eligibility volume calculation. These are:
Under the ASC Feed Standard, several sustainability improvement incentives are present:
As of 31 October 2025, ASC-certified farms are required to use ASC-conforming feed produced under the ASC Feed Standard to continue to meet the ASC Farm Standards.
Standard highlights:
Under Principle 1 – The unit of certification (UoC) has a management system to implement the ASC Feed Standard, including operating legally, and in a socially and environmentally responsible manner.
Criterion 1.21 – The UoC uses energy responsibly and monitors Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, the UoC shall identify all energy sources, calculate and report energy consumption, develop an Energy Efficiency Management Plan to improve energy efficiency, increase the proportion of energy from renewables, and identify responsible practices to move toward responsible practices within a meaningful timeline.
Feed mills can use the ASC Greenhouse Gas Calculator to facilitate calculations in line with ASC requirements for farms under the new ASC Farm Standard.
Under Principle 2 – The unit of certification (UoC) sources ingredients responsibly, the UoC shall conduct due diligence on ingredient manufacturers and primary raw material production – where due diligence is a pathway to understand the origins and potential impacts of the ingredients in aquaculture feed.
The UoC shall have a system to ensure it only sources from supply chains that have been risk assessed for the following risk factors:
Find an ASC-certified feed mill here.