GSI challenges the global food sector to increase transparency

In an effort to accelerate the food sector’s movement towards improved long-term future sustainability, the Global Salmon Initiative (GSI) has announced a challenge to other food sectors to join them in exposing it all when it comes to key sustainability and environmental data.

“Truth is an essential ingredient of healthy change. Transparency not only accelerates change, it also helps drive it in a productive direction,” said Avrim Lazar, Principle Consultant to the Global Salmon Initiative. “We all know that we need to accelerate the pace of change if we are going to provide a sustainable diet for the 9 billion people. At the GSI, we have made transparency at the global, regional and company level one of the pillars of our drive to significantly improve sustainability. Our experience has been that by the letting the sun in, it opens the doors to rapid progress.”

Committing to improving sustainability

The GSI is a leadership group of 12 global farmed salmon companies who are committed to improving the sustainability of their operations and providing a healthy and sustainable product. The GSI group has recently published their second annual Sustainability Report which features data across 14 key sustainability and environmental indicators, for all 12 member companies across the past 3 years.

“The Global Salmon Initiative (GSI) continues to set a leading example in its latest annual Sustainability Report, which indicates that the number of salmon farms certified globally by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) scheme has leapt from 5 to 70 in 2015”, said Richard Holland, Director of Market Transformation at WWF (Worldwide Fund for Nature). “Importantly, the GSI report enables all stakeholders to follow progress against ASC principles which shows a clear pathway to better production and sets a high bar for transparency that we encourage other industry sectors and platforms such as the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) to adopt.”

Lazar, repeating his challenge to other food sectors, added, “We all need to step up to a heightened level of transparency. The naked truth is not always pretty but it will take us where we want to go”.

The “expose it all” challenge was issued at the EAT Forum, where stakeholders from around the world from the fields of health, science, food and sustainability are coming together to discuss how we can transform our food system to offer both nutritious and sustainable food which work in harmony with our planet.