Last month Grieg Seafoods canceled their Aquaculture Stewardship Council certificates, leaving zero ASC certified salmon farms in Canada. But the eco-labelling of Canadian farmed salmon continues under an alternative certification, Best Aquaculture Practices.
Both certification schemes have had their credibility questioned over the years. Most recently, BAP has been the subject of a US Federal Trade Commission petition for potentially misleading marketing claims.
So how did we get from BC salmon farmers holding the ASC up as the ‘gold standard’ to dropping it like a hot potato? And what does this change to BAP mean for grocers and seafood shoppers?
Spoiler: despite a change in eco-labels, salmon farming remains on the red list.
Prior to the creation of ASC, the salmon farming industry including companies operating in BC, participated in the multi-stakeholder Salmon Aquaculture Dialogues that would eventually establish the ASC Salmon Standard. At the time SeaChoice member groups, David Suzuki Foundation and Living Oceans, alongside other NGOs, also participated in the Dialogues in efforts to prevent the industry creating a weak standard (in the end we voted against the final standard). All up, these Dialogues took nearly a decade.
In 2014, the Global Salmon Initiative – then 15 salmon farming companies including multi-nationals Mowi (then Marine Harvest), Cermaq and Grieg – had committed to certifying 100% of their operations by 2020. The pressure to become ASC certified was on.
Once the ASC Salmon Standard was operationalized, environmental requirements from the years-long dialogues were quickly eroded – seemingly overnight – at the request of industry and auditors. BC farms were exempt from the Standard’s sea lice requirements, and the number of parasiticide chemicals treatments allowed increased by 350 per cent in some regions.
In 2015, the first ASC farm in BC was certified – with seven sea lion deaths, dangerously high sea lice numbers that peaked at 23 lice per fish that SeaChoice members Living Oceans challenged in a complaint. Such outrageous practices continued to be certified throughout the decade of ASC in BC and revisions to the salmon standard increasingly reflected business as usual industry practices. That said, some credit must be given to ASC for heeding SeaChoice’s calls to include local stakeholders in processes, and a long due commitment to rectify their problematic exclusion of intermediary farms from audits.
While the number of ASC farms and volumes did multiply rapidly, the GSI companies never did meet the 100% by 2020 ASC commitment. Then 2020 passed, Mowi left the GSI and all BC companies started to decrease their ASC volume until there was no more (though the GSI continues to state companies, including those in BC, are committed to ASC).
Instead BC salmon farmers joined their east coast salmon farming counterparts by signing up to the Best Aquaculture Practices – the certification scheme of the industry-dominated trade association, Global Seafood Alliance.
BAP and its claims of ‘best practices,’ ‘responsible,’ ‘sustainable,’ and the like has received much criticism from civil society groups. Last May, 76 global groups denounced the latest BAP farmed salmon standard as greenwash in an open letter. The letter listed damning evidence of numerous BAP certified farms and facilities associated with environmental damage, illegal activity, and/or negative impacts to endangered species. Examples were found in all of the following major salmon farming regions: the U.S., Norway, Chile, Scotland, Australia – and Canada.
Alarmingly, the BAP certification has also been associated with human rights abuses. A long investigation by Corporate Accountability Lab and a whistleblower exposé by The Outlaw Ocean Project detailed forced labor, hazardous child labor, dangerous working conditions and more associated with the Indian farmed shrimp supply chain, including farms and processing facilities that are BAP certified. Environmental damage and banned antibiotics were also uncovered. The farmed shrimp was tracked back to major grocers in North America. In November 2024, CAL and the Southern Shrimp Alliance submitted a petition to the US Federal Trade Commission requesting action against BAP for false or deceptive advertising.
Despite these criticisms and serious allegations, a significant number of major grocers continue to rely on BAP as part of their responsible seafood sourcing policies.
As evident in our Seafood Progress results, all large Canadian grocers happily accept ASC and/or BAP farmed salmon (rare exception: Buy-Low Foods dropped farmed salmon years ago!). Their reliance on questionable certifications leaves them vulnerable to criticisms and brand risk.
SeaChoice recently highlighted the problem of greenwashing on seafood products in the Canadian marketplace in our submission to the Competition Bureau. We called on the Canadian Government to establish tough rules, including those for certifications.
And finally, our Public Service Announcement:
ASC certified. BAP certified. ‘Responsibly sourced’. Seafood shoppers – don’t fall for eco-labels on farmed salmon! Open net pen BC farmed salmon remains not recommended by Ocean Wise and on the Seafood Watch red-list (Avoid).
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