GSI at Seeds&Chips: The Global Food Innovation Summit

In May, the Global Salmon Initiative (GSI) attended and presented at Seeds&Chips – the Global Food and Innovation Summit in Milan, Italy. Seeds&Chips brings together the brightest minds in the food, agriculture, and technology sphere for an annual event that features conference sessions, exhibitions, and interactive events to discuss and showcase the ever-evolving global food system. This year’s central summit theme focused on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), how we must adapt and innovate to ensure that future food systems are sustainable for the planet while also considering the impact of climate change.

GSI Convenor, Avrim Lazar, joined a panel of industry thought-leaders in a session titled: ‘Chain Reaction: Solutions for Improving the Global Food Supply Chain’. This session looked at a number of examples of how the food chain is innovating to become more efficient, more productive, and more sustainable. The GSI was invited to share how we are utilizing a model of pre-competitive collaboration in salmon aquaculture to accelerate improvements in environmental performance at a global scale.

Lazar addressed a number of important topics in his presentation including the growth of the aquaculture sector, its role in providing healthy protein to meet the growing demand, and how the GSI model of change was driving environmental improvements at speed and at scale.

To hear Avrim Lazar’s full presentation, watch the video below.

“The good news is that we can get change at speed and scale if we find out how to adopt this model of private sector-driven creative innovation, using pre-competitive collaboration and basing it on high ambition and transparency.”

Avrim Lazar, GSI Convenor

Aquaculture is one of fastest growing food producing sectors on the planet, and while farmed fish is widely recognized as a resource-efficient protein that is both healthy for the planet and consumers, as the industry grows it must be managed responsibly to ensure it remains a sustainable option.

One of the ways the GSI is ensuring responsible growth for the farmed salmon industry is to improve the level of transparency. As part of his presentation, Lazar announced the release of the GSI’s annual Sustainability Report, which provides key sustainability data across all GSI members in all regions. Transparency is not only crucial in demonstrating measurable progress in operations towards best practices, but also in holding us as GSI members accountable to our commitment towards an increasingly sustainable salmon farming industry, and to highlight where more progress is needed.

Lazar also discusses the opportunities this unique approach to industry change offers: ambition, power, capacity, community, and truth.