Salmon feed firms focus on soy sourcing
“Soy industries in Brazil are committed to conducting their businesses in the msot sustainable way”
SALMON feed companies Skretting, Cargill, BioMar and Mowi have joined forces with the certification organisation ProTerra and Brazilian soy producers to help prevent deforestation.
Brazilian agriculture practices have recently come under scrutiny from the environmental lobby around the world, which could have implications for the aquaculture industry.
Aquafeeds often contain soy products originating from Brazil but salmon feed producers in northern Europe only purchase certified deforestation free soy.
While the volumes used are not significant from a global perspective, feed companies have also now established a roundtable organisation to work to improve the salmon value chain.
The Aquaculture Dialogue on Sustainable Soy Sourcing from Brazil group met recently in Brazil and took action on traceability, transparency, supplier code of conduct and deforestation.
Following the first meeting, ProTerra has worked with the Brazilian soy protein concentrate (SPC) producers Caramaru, Imcopa and CJ Selecta to include traceability information and to improve transparency.
Each shipment delivered to feed producers will now carry details about the municipalities and states from which the soy from that batch is sourced.
Caramaru, Imcopa and CJ Selecta have also set up a semi-automated tracking capacity to determine the sourcing details of the delivery.
The Google powered AgroTools is the backbone of the system, and the database issues certificates for each farm that is part of the ProTerra programme.
Detailed information about the farm’s deforestation and other illegal activities is available if needed.This means that if a farm is accused of non-compliant activities, or has violated the agreement, it has become easier and faster to determine if and when this occurred, and if the
resultant product has been delivered to European salmon feed producers.
Another challenge for salmon feed producers in Europe has been to demonstrate that soy suppliers respect labour and environmental laws.
The new system ensures that the companies involved in the group fulfil regulations associated with all these issues.
The SPC producers see that non-deforestation is an important tool in the fight against climate change and will try to initiate actions to ensure their farmers preserve all forest on their land.
‘Soy protein concentrate industries in Brazil are committed to conducting their business with respect to social, environmental and economic aspects in the most sustainable way,’ said Guilherme Tancredi, CEO at CJ Selecta SA.