The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) will host a special session at Aquaculture Europe 2025 in Valencia to discuss how Europe can put into practice the newly developed FAO Guidelines for Sustainable Aquaculture.
The session, titled “From principles to practice: implementing the FAO Guidenlines for Sustainable Aquaculture – multi-stakeholder perspectives”, will take place on 24 September 2025, from 10:30 to 12:30, at the Valencia Congress Centre.
Aquaculture is the fastest-growing food production sector worldwide, but Europe’s output has expanded at a slower pace compared to the global average. Despite abundant resources and strong demand, the sector faces persistent barriers that limit its growth.
The Guidelines Sustainable Aquaculture, designed by FAO and its Member Countries, are intended as a flexible framework rather than a “one-size-fits-all” solution. They aim to help countries address sector-specific challenges, adapt international best practices, and contribute their own innovations to global aquaculture development.
The Valencia session will open with a panel on the future of aquaculture in Europe, featuring experts from FAO, the European Commission, Norway, Turkey, and the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean, among others. Discussion will focus on status, trends, opportunities and pathways for the sector.
A second panel will then examine how the Guidelines Sustainable Aquaculture can be implemented in Europe. Participants include representatives from the European Commission, Spain’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the Federation of European Aquaculture Producers (FEAP), the European Aquaculture Technology & Innovation Platform (EATiP), and Wageningen University.
The event will conclude with an interactive audience dialogue, where stakeholders from government, industry, research, NGOs and the media will be invited to share their views. According to the organisers, “Your input will make the difference-let’s shape this together!”
FAO notes that contributions from the session will feed into a regional Guidelines Sustainable Aquaculture Implementation Framework, ensuring that Europe not only adapts good practices from elsewhere but also shares its own experiences and governance approaches with the wider world.
The session will be moderated by FAO experts Alessandro Lovatelli, Junning Cai, and Stefania Fumo, with closing remarks by Xinhua Yuan, Deputy Director (Aquaculture) at the FAO’s Fisheries and Aquaculture Division.
Latest news
-
European Bioethanol: Its co-products, an alternative to raw materials in aquaculture
Spain, 15 September 2025 | Biorefineries across Europe generated 6.9 million tonnes of protein-rich co-products in 2024 — enough to produce over 20 million tonnes of aquafeed for seabass, seabream and meagre
-
-
