New Benchmark Recognizes ALI as Key Stakeholder
The World Benchmarking Alliance was created to spur action towards meeting the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the private sector. With only ten years left, the WBA set out to create a Food and Agriculture Benchmark last year that would assess 350 of the most influential food and agriculture companies on the key issues underpinning a transformation of our global food system. The benchmark is meant to provide indicators to evaluate and influence a company’s progress towards the SDGs and serve as a recipe for change within their business practices, operations, and even encourage their partners along the value chain to do the same.
We at ALI are committed to advocating for institutional change-makers to incorporate aquatic animal welfare into existing and new standards, policies and guidelines. We worked with the WBA during their stakeholder consultation meetings during December 2020 and January 2021 and concluded by submitting written feedback on several draft indicators in late January. Many members from our global coalitions -- the Aquatic Animal Alliance and the Coalition for Aquatic Conservation -- also signed onto our feedback.
We were thrilled to see WBA incorporate much of our feedback in their final benchmark.
First, their “Animal Welfare” indicator now specifically includes “aquatic animals” alongside “farm animals,” and includes “aquaculture” alongside “livestock” production. This is already a huge step in the right direction since historically, discussions around animal welfare and factory farming issues have only referred to terrestrial farmed animals. There is an urgent need for a shift in discourse to explicitly list fish (i.e., all aquatic animals) and aquaculture production in any language involving animal welfare, livestock production, and/or factory farming. ALI is very pleased to see this change and to serve as a reference (See B11. Animal Welfare on page 36).
Also, whereas in the draft methodology, this indicator only focused on the 70 billion farmed land animals, the final benchmark includes the additional 100 billion fish that are farmed for food annually.
“100 billion fish are farmed for food annually with prevalent welfare problems in their slaughter, transport, handling and rearing, for which the severity and duration of distress is often high. By 2050, livestock and aquaculture production is projected to double compared to 2000.”
We are equally pleased to see that the final benchmark added a specific requirement for third-party audits meant to hold companies accountable and avoid any possible “humanewashing,” a problematic form of consumer deception that relates to inflated representations about the way animals raised for food are treated.
“The company has targets for the percentage of animal derived products to be audited/certified by third parties to meet higher welfare standards and discloses performance against all its targets.”
However, it’s important to point out that currently nearly none of the major food labelling products have high welfare standards for fish, making such certifications inadequate for combating humanewashing. For this reason, ALI and our Aquatic Animal Alliance are currently working with several major labelling schemes, including MSC, ASC, GLOBALG.A.P., Friends of the Sea, and Best Aquaculture Practices, to incorporate and/or improve their welfare standards. As labelling schemes update their requirements, companies whose products are certified by these schemes will have to update their welfare policies. Companies that are not certified by these schemes are strongly encouraged to follow the welfare standards.
Second, the indicator for “Antibiotic use and growth-promoting substances” was also updated based on our feedback. Whereas the draft version only included antibiotic use for farmed land animals, the final benchmark was updated to include aquatic animals:
“Antibiotic use is prevalent in the food and agriculture sector, with around 75% of antibiotics in the United States alone used on farm animals. This number is projected to increase by 22% by 2030. Moreover, accelerated growth of aquaculture accompanied by widespread and unrestricted use of prophylactic antibiotics, especially in developing countries, has resulted in a series of developments detrimental to the environment and human health. Antimicrobial resistance is a significant public health threat, and governments across the world are calling for a decrease in the use of antibiotics in livestock and aquaculture production.” (See B12. Antibiotic use and growth-promoting substances on page 36 & 37).
Finally, it is important to note that in their indicator for “protein diversification,” we urged for the WBA to avoid encouraging protein diversification as “replacing meat-based proteins with fish/seafood.” According to the FAO, in 2017 about a third of the global fish stocks were overfished, while nearly 60% were fully exploited. Further, up to half of all wild-caught fish are used as feed for farmed fish. Thus, we urged for a more concerted push to shift towards a more plant-based diet in regions where applicable. While fish may be an important source of protein in certain countries, current levels of salmon farming, often in open water net-pens, is contributing to the introduction of invasive species and parasites into local waters (see here for example). In the final benchmark, it now says:
“The company has a target for protein diversification that replaces meat-based proteins and dairy with an increased proportion of plant-based proteins, sustainably produced fish/seafood and other alternatives, such as meat analogues and plant-based dairy alternatives.”
In order to have sustainably produced fish/seafood, we must address the various issues in wild capture fisheries, such as overfishing, IUU, and ghostgear, and heavily invest in research and transition towards plant-based feed alternatives in aquaculture.
We look forward to working with WBA in the future and using the Food & Ag benchmark to spur private sector action towards a sustainable food systems transformation.