Established by the Jeremy Coller Foundation, the FAIRR Initiative is a collaborative investor network that raises awareness of the material ESG risks and opportunities caused by intensive livestock production.
We provide cutting-edge research, best practice tools and collaborative engagement opportunities to help investors integrate these risks and opportunities into their investment decision-making and active stewardship processes.
Aquaculture
The most commonly farmed species, salmon and shrimp, are carnivorous, which means they require raw materials made from wild-caught fish in their diets. This links the expansion of aquaculture to depletion of wild fish stocks. Like in other protein production systems, disease presents a risk to aquaculture companies. Use of antibiotics varies widely in aquaculture by region.
Fifteen companies in the Index produce aquaculture products. These companies contribute a total of $56 billion in revenues (18% of the total 2018 revenues for all 60 Index companies). They have a market capitalisation of $48 billion (15% of the total). However, ten of these are pure aquaculture players and five of these companies produce other proteins. For the five that produce other proteins, aquaculture represents a smaller proportion of their revenues. The estimated revenue generated by these five companies from aquaculture is $2.5 billion (or 10% of the total revenues generated by these five companies).
Results
On average, fish feed accounts for around 87% of GHG emissions in Atlantic salmon production. However, none of the companies has a Scope 3 emissions-reduction target.
Salmon and shrimp production rely on wild fish stocks, yet companies producing multiple proteins are not discussing environmental impacts of feed production. European salmon producers acknowledge the importance of this issue and are disclosing plans to address it.
Most companies are in the process of certifying their operations and five of 15 companies are fully certified to at least one scheme, but 60% of Asian multiple protein producers do not disclose any information on this issue.
There is a strong regional trend in performance on disease management. Asian producers score the lowest, European producers score the highest.
None of the Asian aquaculture companies, both pure-play and multiple protein producers, discloses information on quantity of antibiotics used.
FAIRR Initiative
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