Alliance to promote efficiency in the marine ingredient supply chain

MarinTrust and the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) will collaborate to raise awareness of their programs, reduce duplication, and create efficiencies for marine ingredient producers.

Through the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), both organisations will explore opportunities for mutual recognition and alignment of Standards and achieve a more reliable marine ingredient supply chain.

Regarding this initiative, Executive Chair at MarinTrust Libby Woodhatch said: "This collaboration reflects both organisations' shared commitment to improving fisheries management and addressing the increasing demand for responsible marine ingredients. This MoU aims to clarify and recognise that both programmes are complementary yet different. The complementarity enables efficiencies to be designed and offered to seafood supply chain actors."

Additionally, MSF Chief Programme Officer Nicolas Guichoux indicated: "The core of this MoU is to recognise that both programmes share an interest in positioning robust assurance – based on credible third-party certification – as the preferable tool for the marine ingredients industry to demonstrate responsible sourcing."

Standards that complement each other

MSC certification applies to all wild capture fisheries, while MarinTrust focuses on marine ingredient producers. Thus, the chain of custody for both can be used to cover further processing up to feed producers, pet food manufacturers, etc.

The MoU will explore mutual recognitions and collaborations to help reduce complexity and duplication of efforts. This will result in a reduction of costs for the industry.

A few days ago, MSC launched a new initiative aimed at accelerating progress in sustainable fishing practices worldwide. The new 'MSC Improvement Program' offers fisheries special commercial support and incentives as a stepping stone to achieving MSC Fisheries Standard certification.