What to look for when purchasing seafood

This is Part 2 of 3 of an interview with Sun Brage of Aquaculture Stewardship Council.

Part 1 is right here in which Sun gave an overview of the types of fish farms.

In this video, Sun covers:

• what to look for and ask for when purchasing seafood
• standards that farms must meet to acquire the ASC certification, including feed standards and population densities
• nutritional differences between wild-caught and farmed fish

Highlights

Look for ASC logo on farmed seafood, and MSC logo on wild-caught seafood.

If you cannot find these two, use these other benchmarking systems:

• World Wildlife Fund Seafood Guides
• Monterey Bay  Aquarium Seafood Watch program (they also have an app)
• South Carolina Aquarium Good Catch program for the Southeast US

it’s important to understand what standards are used to determine rankings within each benchmarking system. Many of these take into account environmental impact, but not the feed given to the fish.

The difference between ASC and MSC and other organizations is that ASC and MSC are international, non-profit, certifying agencies. When a product bears their logos, it means that that specific fishery or farm met their standards for health of environmental impact, and community relations.

One important fact is that to meet ASC farm standards, only 50% of river water can be diverted from a natural source, and the water must be tested and treated before re-introducing it into the river.

75-80% of aquaculture feed is derived from terrestrial (land-grown) products. The industry is moving towards more terrestrial feed sources because using wild-caught fish as feed is not sustainable.

ASC is developing a new feed standard focused on sustainability and environmental impact.

Population densities are controlled in aquaculture. For example, 98% of a salmon mariculture environment must be open water.

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