The Aquaculture Stewardship Council is an independent non-profit organisation and labelling organization that establishes protocol on farmed seafood while ensuring sustainableaquaculture. The ASC provides sustainable and responsible aquaculture producers with a stringent certification and labelling scheme guaranteeing to consumers that the seafood they are purchasing is sustainable for the environment, and socially responsible. The Aquaculture Stewardship Council was founded in 2010 by the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Dutch Sustainable Trade Initiative. According to their website, the ASC's Vision is " world where aquaculture plays a major role in supplying food and social benefits for mankind whilst minimizing negative impacts on the environment". Their mission is " transform aquaculture towards environmental sustainability and social responsibility using efficient market mechanisms that create value across the chain.". The ASC is an example of multistakeholder governance, and a full member of the ISEAL Alliance, a sustainability standards setting membership.
The standards of the ASC have resulted from the WWF-initiated Aquaculture Dialogues, a multi-stakeholder series of dialogues held over the course of a decade and which involved around 2,000 scientists, NGOs, industry participants and other interested parties. In order for an aquatic farm to be certified by the ASC, a comprehensive series of criteria must be fulfilled; including pre-assessment, on-site farm audit and an audit report. All the audit reports for all the ASC-certified farms are transparently made available to the public via the ASC's website. The ASC has standards for the 12 following species: abalone, bivalves, freshwater trout, pangasius, salmon, seriola and cobia, shrimp, and tilapia. A Feed Standard is currently being elaborated; whilst standards for several other species are under consideration. New standards must follow a transparent setting procedures, involving several rounds of public consultation; with all feedback made public. An Indonesian tilapia farm was the first to have reached ASC-certification in 2012. Several pre-competitive organizations are now using the rigorous ASC standards as a means to progress their industry towards more environmental sustainability and social responsibility: such as the Global Salmon Initiative ; and the Sustainable Shrimp Partnership which operates in Ecuador. The GSI member companies have pledge to have all their salmon farms ASC-certified by 2020.
