How we mitigate risks

As a business that plays an important role in the global aquaculture sector, we are doing our part to reduce negative impacts across the value chain. We seek to safeguard the ecosystems and communities our business touches as part of our belief that the global food system can both protect the planet and provide the food the world needs. The most recently available data for our business related to the topics below can be found on this section of our site.

Our aqua nutrition business adheres to Cargill’s overarching risk mitigation approach and governance policies, and we lean on Cargill’s global capabilities and expertise to help us do our work in these areas. For more information on how Cargill manages risks, read the company’s latest Impact Report.

 

Climate change

We seek to drive improvements across our operations and supply chains, while also providing a model for the aquaculture industry to reduce its impacts on climate and ecosystems. And so, we strive every day within our business to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, raise efficiency and do more with less. This includes our signature SeaFurther™ Sustainability program, which serves as our primary catalyst for driving decarbonization with our customers and other supply chain partners.

Our aqua nutrition business has been reporting on climate metrics since 2017 and is aligned with Cargill’s corporate climate goals. We continue to use 2017 as a baseline, as it aligns with Cargill’s corporate climate baseline and targets. We are implementing numerous solutions across our network of plants to lower our energy use and draw on renewable energy as we produce feed.  We are striving to improve the data quality of our footprint calculations, working with suppliers to get primary data on their raw materials that best reflects their actual processes, rather than using the secondary data and proxy data that is a frequent starting point for calculations.

Meanwhile, through SeaFurther we are working with our customers to reduce the carbon footprint of their farmed seafood by at least 30% by 2030. We are well-positioned to do this through our scientific expertise on formulation and fish health, our access to the full breadth of Cargill for achieving scale in sustainable ingredients, and our close relationships with farmers and other ingredient suppliers. Feed is typically the largest component of farmed salmon’s footprint and where we have directed the bulk of our focus.

Regenerative agriculture is a critical pathway to lower the carbon footprint and improve ecosystem services of terrestrial feed ingredients. Cargill is a market leader in this space, working with farmers to help them implement regenerative practices like cover crops and reduced tillage. These provide environmental benefits like improved soil health, water quality, water use, and biodiversity, while also offering a new revenue stream to farmers. Through SeaFurther, we have been scaling up the use of these regenerative agriculture solutions over the past few years. This is giving our aqua feed customers even more options as we work together to reduce aquaculture’s footprint.

Reducing the footprint of farmed seafood by 30% or more is possible for customers, but it takes planning and extensive coordination up and down the supply chain – often with turnaround times of two years. We are working now with customers on supply chain actions for the next few years to get on a pathway to meet our goals together. And we have set an intermediate goal to enable a 15% reduction across individual customers’ feed footprint by 2026 for those engaged with SeaFurther. 

 

Marine biodiversity

To mitigate negative impacts on ocean health and marine ecosystems, we seek to source our marine ingredients from certified sources or Fishery Improvement Projects (FIPs).

For certified sources, we rely on the most respected certifications – MarinTrust and Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)– to ensure the marine ingredients we use meet our sustainability principles based on the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries.

MarinTrust is a factory certification standard, ensuring responsible manufacturing and raw material sourcing when processing fish into fishmeal and fish oil. MSC is a fisheries certification standard, focusing rigorous criteria on fishing practices and management. By leveraging both certifications, we address sustainability at each step before marine ingredients arrive at our feed mills.

With time-bound commitments to achieve third-party seafood certifications and mechanisms in place to verify progress independently along the way, FIPs are a credible vehicle for improvement on the water while also ensuring the fishery has the support needed to drive change. We engage with fisheries that do not yet meet certification standards to transition toward more sustainable and responsible practices. By working with stakeholders across the sector, we support FIPs in key sourcing regions that advance ocean health and secure future supplies of more sustainable raw materials.

FisheryProgress iis the authoritative registry for FIPs and it informs our decisions on sourcing from and supporting FIPs. World Wildlife Fund and Sustainable Fisheries Partnerships provide information on key elements of what a FIP is and how one is formed.

Deforestation

At the corporate level, Cargill is committed to DCF sourcing across the company’s agricultural supply chains by 2030, including for high-priority supply chains like soy from South America. Learn more about Cargill’s land commitments here and the company’s approach to sustainable land use here.

All soy ingredients in our aqua nutrition business’s coldwater feeds have been material-certified deforestation- and conversion-free (DCF) through physical flow or credits since 2020. We rely on certifications like those from the ProTerra Foundation and the Roundtable for Responsible Soy to help us deliver feeds that prioritize land conservation.

 

Human rights

Human rights are fundamental at Cargill. We are committed to respecting the human rights of all Cargill employees and those whose lives and livelihoods we touch. More information about Cargill’s commitments and actions in support of human rights is available​​​​​​​ here, including the company’s human rights policy, corporate due diligence policy, and grievance process.

People are at the center of everything we do in our aqua nutrition business. A safe, supportive working environment enables our workforce to deliver the quality goods and services our customers expect and helps us advance our sustainability goals. We also expect the same from our supply chain partners. To that end, we are working to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in our own business and safeguard the rights of those in and around our supply chains.

In recent years, we have reinforced our commitment to respecting human rights by conducting human rights assessments of high-risk supply chains. These have helped us deepen our understanding of risks in our raw material supply chains and identify opportunities to collaborate with peers and other stakeholders to improve the aqua ingredients sector as a whole. Our work in this area is not new. For example, we have been guided since 2015 by the U.K. Modern Slavery Act. This paved the way for ensuring compliance with more recent and comprehensive legislation – such as the Norwegian Transparency Act and those emerging from the European Union – and with certifications emphasizing human rights due diligence.

At Cargill, we work to eradicate child labor from our operations and supply chains. We implement appropriately designed due diligence systems that are intended to identify, prevent, and remediate child labor. We do not hire individuals under the legal working age or the mandatory age of schooling (whichever is lower). Cargill workers under the age of 18 are assigned work that is appropriate for their age and abilities, and that allows them to attend school.

We address child labor in our ingredient supply chains by working with our suppliers. Our sourcing policy requires ingredients suppliers to abide by local laws and regulations on this issue and with the International Labour Organization (ILO) Minimum Age Convention No. 138 and ILO Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention No. 182. We are working to have all our suppliers sign this policy.

 

Our sourcing policy

Our supplier management process helps us identify and manage potential risks while ensuring that we receive high-quality, more sustainable ingredients. To ensure the integrity of the products we offer, we demand that suppliers follow our​​​​​​​ sourcing policy and Cargill’s Supplier Code of Conduct.

Our sourcing policy stipulates that those who sell raw materials to us must abide by our sustainability principles and have environmental and social risk management procedures in place. It sets out our expectations on environmental and social performance, aligned with third-party standards where applicable. Each year, we conduct audits to ensure our suppliers meet the requirements.