Global Salmon Initiative Archives

Global Salmon Initiative publishes annual sustainability report

May 20, 2021 — The Global Salmon Initiative has published its annual sustainability report and launched a resource hub designed to offer data and materials to document the impact the organization is having upon the industry.

GSI was created in 2013 as a collaborative effort by many of the world’s largest farmed salmon producers to push for collective efforts on sustainability initiatives. The group, which now includes 13 companies comprising 40 percent of the world’s total salmon production, has established goals including minimizing its environmental footprint and continuing to improve its social contributions.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Global farmed salmon producers significantly reduced antibiotic use over seven years, GSI report finds

May 12, 2020 — Seven years of data from more than 50 percent of the world’s farmed salmon sector is featured in the latest annual sustainability report from the Global Salmon Initiative (GSI).

Released on 11 May, the report’s data covers 15 key indicators – 10 environmental and five social – impacting salmon aquaculture operations worldwide. The new issuance, which highlights data through 2019, reveals some promising sector trends, GSI said, including a 50 percent reduction in the use of antibiotics over the past seven years, as well as a more holistic, collective approach to preventing and managing sea lice.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Mowi CEO: GSI will continue to be a game-changer

May 30, 2019 — The Global Salmon Initiative (GSI) recently published its annual Sustainability Report, providing six years of data across 14 indicators for more than half of the global salmon industry. The report identified a number of key trends within the salmon farming sector and its membership, including:

A 50 percent decrease in the use of sea lice treatments, coupled with a 120 percent increase in the use of non-medicinal methods – due both to technological advancements and best-practice sharing;
The amount of fishmeal and fish oil in feed has reduced by 17 percent and 9 percent, respectively, resulting in an overall 11 percent decrease in the sector’s use of marine ingredients;
Farmed salmon continues to be one of the most eco-efficient forms of animal protein production, with the lowest carbon footprint, lowest feed conversion ratio, and lowest land-use;
More than 620,000 metric tons (MT) of salmon farmed by GSI members are now certified to the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) standard. Coming from over 185 farms worldwide, this represents almost 60 percent of their total production.

In an interview with SeafoodSource, Alf-Helge Aarskog, CEO of Mowi and co-chair of GSI, explained how the group’s collaborative endeavors and focus on transparency will continue to drive improved sustainability across the industry for a long time to come.

SeafoodSource: Has GSI achieved what you hoped it would over the past six years, and what have been its defining moments so far?

Aarskog: Having been involved in the GSI since it began in 2013, I am very pleased with how far the group has come. There is still a lot for us to work on, but in only six years to see the progress the industry has made in improving its transparency, focusing more on its sustainability challenges, and the speed at which we have approached the ASC standard, I think it is well beyond what any of us expected.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Sustainability rising for farmed salmon, says GSI report

May 16, 2017 — Farming salmon is more sustainable than growing land animals in several key ways, according to the Global Salmon Initiative’s (GSI) latest sustainability report.

And some of the biggest future improvements in sustainability will likely result from more efficient feed, say salmon industry experts.

The third annual GSI sustainability report, released in late April, contains four years of data and tracks 14 indicators determined by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC). It was the first to include data verified by independent auditors.

The 12 GSI member companies account for roughly half of global farmed salmon production. Nearly a quarter of all GSI farms have been certified by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, an increase of 60 percent from 2015. GSI has a goal of having all farms certified by ASC by 2020.

Compared to other sources of animal protein, salmon did well on sustainability indicators such as fresh water use and carbon emissions.

Salmon also have a low – and falling – feed conversion ratio, meaning that farmers efficiently retain the protein and energy in feed while converting it to food for people. That ratio is now 1.3 to 1. By contrast, the ratio for chicken is 1.9 to 1, while for pork it’s 2.8 to 1, and for beef it’s 7.5 to 1.

Still, less total weight of salmon is farmed than other major protein sources, with 3.1 million metric tons produced annually, compared to 96.1 million tons of chicken, 113 million tons of pig products, 64 million tons of cattle products and 8.6 million tons of sheep products.

Read the full story at Seafood Source