March 19, 2020 — Seafood companies across the tuna supply chain are making strides toward meeting the four commitments that are part of the Tuna 2020 Traceability Declaration.
The Global Tuna Alliance – a consortium of companies seeking to improve the tuna supply chain – surveyed the 66 companies that signed the declaration in 2017 to assess their progress, compiling the results in a report to be released soon. About two-thirds of companies responded.
March 17, 2020 — Dozens of methods of documenting seafood traceability – and hundreds of individual systems – have emerged in recent years as companies across the seafood supply chain and the technology vendors that serve them seek to demonstrate the sustainable, legal origins of their products.
Rarely can those systems seamlessly interact with each other or share data, a gap that poses an ever-larger problem as regulators draft new traceability laws and consumers demand more information about the origin of their food.
March 18, 2019 — Legit Fish, a Boston, Massachusetts-based traceability company, is launching a new traceability technology at Seafood Expo North America.
The company, which has partnered with the BASE Auction Company, is unveiling its new tool on 17 March at their SENA19 booth, 289. According to a release from the company, the system will enable vessels to “hail quantities into the auction that can be sold via a real-time cloud-based platform, with transactions clearing simultaneously in milliseconds.”
“Increasing stories around seafood fraud are eroding consumer trust; we’re seeing repetitive cases where seafood is claimed to be from local waters when it is in fact imported,” Michael Carroll, CEO of Legit Fish, said in a release. “The technology we are bringing to the market changes all of that because our traceability system is verified with the official government harvest records. No one else is doing this.”
According to Legit Fish, the software will be able to trace seafood from the dock to the dinner table utilizing cloud-based software that creates chain of custody control, ensuring that the products are traceable throughout their journey.
The debut of the new technology comes just over a week after Oceana released a study showing mislabeling of species is continuing to be a problem. That situation is what Legit Fish is attempting to eradicate, said Carroll.
March 8, 2018 — Albertsons Companies, which operates more than 2,300 grocery stores in the United States, has selected Trace Register to trace its seafood products.
Trace Register’s TR+ Analytics with CMCA (continuous monitoring continuous auditing) will enable Albertsons Companies to meet sustainability specifications in the seafood supply chain on every shipment, according to Albertsons.
“Trace Register’s leading-edge monitoring and analytics will help track the movement of our products from the oceans or farm all the way to our U.S. distribution centers so we can verify that our requirements for sustainable, responsible sourcing are met,” said Anthony Snow, director of seafood for Albertsons Companies.
Read the full story at Seafood Source
March 8, 2018 — The following was released by Legit Fish:
Legit Fish (www.legitfishinc.com), a provider of advanced seafood logistics and traceability technology, today announced a deal with BASE New England who operates the largest seafood auction in New England and is based in New Bedford and Gloucester MA.
Legit Fish Inc. developed and is implementing this first of its kind, end to end logistics and traceability solution with Atlantic Coast Seafood Inc. (Boston MA). This innovative cloud-based software application provides the domestic seafood industry with operational efficiencies as well as new cutting-edge marketing tools, linking off-loading, government reporting, inventory management, sales, accounting and an industry leading traceability system. The traceability application utilizes a patient pending system which offers the retail trade an unmatched level of traceability based on verification against the official government harvest records.
On March 8th 2018, Legit Fish Inc. signed a contract to further develop this system with BASE New England. In addition to the software application developed in Boston, Legit Fish Inc. will be expanding this system by creating a custom Auction application which will offer a high level of versatility and functionality. The application runs on the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform. This technology solution provides auction participants with the ability to use their mobile devices to purchase seafood products on the Auction platform and allow vessels to transmit hail information direct into the software via a multi language voice response app. These advancements for BASE New England will allow them to clearly monitor “on the water” hail information as well as product sales compared to dealer reported federal records. These third-party compliance tools have positive implications for BASE New England and the port of New Bedford in their effort to reopen the New England Groundfish Fishery Sector IX. Considering NOAA’s requirement for increased accountability measures to the operations plan of Sector IX, this revolutionary app provides a substantial technological improvement for the fishery and the sector.
Legit Fish Inc. will be attending the 2018 Boston Seafood Show and will be available for both product demos and detailed explanations of this new innovative technology.
About Legit Fish Inc.
Legit Fish Inc. provides Seafood off-loaders a complete cost-efficient ERP solution. Our innovative cloud-based application can be integrated with various other systems and provides an industry leading traceability system that is verified to the official government harvest records. This new system offers supply chain participants and retailers complete confidence in the origin of their products as well as a new innovative solution to market products. Further information can be found at www.legitfishinc.com.
October 23, 2017 — Beep. Beep. That ubiquitous sound, heard six billion times a day at the checkout counters in grocery stores and shops around the world, could be integral to the next phase of seafood traceability.
Barcodes – and their cousin, the QR code – may seem like simple things, but the data they hold could be the difference between knowing the origin of a fish or not.
For fishermen, seafood processors and others in the industry, better traceability and more efficient product tracking can reduce logistics costs while building customer loyalty. For environmentalists and regulators, traceability offers another tool to fight illegal and unsustainable fishing.
Compared to other food industries, seafood is behind in its use of GS1 Standards, the most widely used product-tracking system in the world, according to Angela Fernandez, the vice president of retail grocery and food service for GS1 U.S.
Though some seafood companies are making major progress, only about 25 percent have traceability programs underway, Fernandez said. Other food industries are further along. The meat industry, for instance, has been using GS1 Standards for almost two decades. More than 65 percent of the produce industry has implemented programs.
June 28, 2017 — As reported previously on this blog, concerns about illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) seafood fraud, led to a proposed rule to establish a traceability program for certain seafood species. The final rule establishing the Seafood Import Monitoring Program was published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), Department of Commerce, in the December 9, 2016 Federal Register.
The Program established permitting, data reporting and recordkeeping requirements for the importation of certain priority fish and fish products—including abalone, several types of cod and tuna, red snapper, shrimp and swordfish—that were identified as being especially vulnerable to seafood fraud. The rule requires seafood importers to trace the origin of the fish they import to either the specific boat that caught the full fish or a “single collection point,” to the day the fish was caught, and to the sector of the specific ocean where the fish was caught.
On January 6, 2017, the National Fisheries Institute, Alfa International Seafood, Inc. and others filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging what they called a “Midnight Final Rule.” In the suit, the plaintiffs questioned whether the Department of Commerce cut corners by, among other things, refusing to disclose for public comment the data that it relied on to identify the seafood species subject to the rule and by allowing “a low-level bureaucrat to issue a binding final rule absent a valid delegation of authority from the Secretary.”
In a June 22, 2017 ruling, Judge Amit P. Mehta did not overturn the final rule establishing the Seafood Import Monitoring Program. Rather, Judge Mehta wrote: “The proper course at this juncture—just months before the rule goes into effect—is to defer ruling on Plaintiffs’ broader challenge to the agency’s authority to engage in rule-making and, instead, afford the federal defendants an opportunity to submit a signed statement from a principal officer within the Department of Commerce that ratifies the rule.”
June 6, 2017 — Ned Bell, the Ocean Wise executive chef at Vancouver Aquarium, founded Chefs for Oceans in 2014 to raise awareness about sustainable seafood.
The organization is “creating a movement that is impacting the way people think about the seafood they eat,” according to Bell’s nomination as a Seafood Champion finalist in March 2017.
On Monday, 5 June, Bell was named one of the winners of the Seafood Champion Awards for Advocacy (the award will be shared with the International Pole & Line Foundation).
“I am so honored to be considered a seafood champion,” Bell told SeafoodSource. “I’m a proud of being a chef, and my community is the one I want to engage.”
Prior to working at the Vancouver Aquarium, Bell was the head chef at Lumiere and at YEW Kitchen in the Four Seasons, both highly regarded restaurants in Vancouver. In both restaurants, Bell championed local and sustainable seafood.
“Ned’s vibrant personality, infectious enthusiasm and commitment to improving the health of Canada’s lakes, oceans, and rivers have made a significant impact on those around him,” Four Seasons Vancouver General Manager Martin Sinclair said.
June 2, 2017 — A new “Tuna Traceability Declaration” is seeking to encourage the tuna industry to improve sustainability and social conditions in the tuna-fishing industry.
The Tuna 2020 Traceability Declaration was created in advance of United Nations Ocean Conference, taking place 5 to 9 June in New York City. The declaration is not legally binding, but is meant to encourage actions and partnerships from and between tuna harvesters, processors, retailers, traders and related nonprofits and concerned governments, to improve the health of tuna populations worldwide. The initiative is in response to the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the conservation and sustainable use of oceans, seas and marine resources.
The declaration is being promoted by the nonprofit World Economic Forum, which brings together global leaders from diverse backgrounds, including business and government to aid the organization’s mission of being “committed to improving the state of the world.”
According to the World Economic Forum, The declaration requires the following commitments from its signees:
March 6, 2017 — The following has been released by FishWise:
FishWise announced today a new partnership with Portland, Maine-based frozen seafood supplier North Atlantic, Inc. (NAI) and its Indonesian subsidiary, Bali Seafood International (BSI). This partnership aims to further advance and communicate NAI/BSI’s commitment to sustainable and socially responsible seafood while exploring new opportunities to expand their influence in the industry.
Recognizing the importance of both sustainable fisheries and communities, NAI/BSI and its partners have invested in a new initiative to build infrastructure in the Lesser Sunda region of Indonesia that will integrate numerous fishing support services, including cold chain technologies, fisheries management, and education. Their new fishery community centers are expected to generate improvements in food safety and waste, traceability, and socioeconomic indicators, alongside environmental gains. BSI will pay premiums to fishers operating through the community centers, incentivizing artisanal fishermen to adopt more responsible practices.
NAI and BSI are seeking to share this innovative commercially-sponsored fishery management model with industry and broader sustainability stakeholders given its potential value in linking artisanal fishermen directly to seafood markets and improving livelihoods throughout fishing communities. This work builds on NAI’s engagement in fishery improvement projects and traceability, as well as its long-term partnerships with retailers to direct supply chains and address critical responsible harvesting practices.
“North Atlantic has been a trusted vendor to our retail partners for many years and we are excited to begin working with them more formally,” said William Wall, FishWise Distributor Division Director. “We at FishWise are always aiming to create and promote progressive sustainability leaders. North Atlantic’s ambition is unique — they are taking direct responsibility for the wellbeing of the community in which they operate and are developing mechanisms for lasting change, which we’re keen to communicate given the potential for these efforts to serve as a model for other companies.”