Australis Aquaculture, the world’s largest producer of barramundi today announced that Australis’ Vietnam farm received a Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program “Best Choice” “green” rating for sustainability.
Seafood Watch experts conferred their “Best Choice” rating on Australis’ off-shore marine farm after an extensive, multi-year evaluation of the company’s operations. This designation represents the first ever “Best Choice” ranking for a fish grown in open marine net-pens. Regarded as one of the most respected seafood assessment systems, Seafood Watch recommendations provide consumers, chefs and wholesale buyers with unbiased science-based guidance about the environmental sustainability of a wide range of farmed and wild-caught seafood products. For farmed fish, the program evaluates a wide range of potential impacts including feed efficiency, habitat and water quality impacts, disease, use of chemicals, and escape risks. For more details on the assessment, visit www.seafoodwatch.org.
Australis Aquaculture was founded in 2004 and has been operating in Central Vietnam since 2007. The Company’s farming operations draw on a hybrid approach that combines on-shore closed containment tanks with off-shore grow-out cages in the open ocean. Low-density stocking, lack of chemical usage and closely monitored feeding all contributed to the “Best Choice” ranking. Australis’ land-based recirculating farm in Massachusetts received a Seafood Watch Best Choice ranking in 2006.
Chefs, foodies, bloggers and other food influentials in the local and sustainable food movement have been embracing barramundi and introducing it onto white table cloth menus as a substitute for popular, though endangered species like Grouper, Snapper or Chilean Seabass.
posted by: Eric Fujimori
6/9/14
