2015 Seafood Summit Pre-Conference Traceability Workshop

As part of the 2015 Seafood Summit in New Orleans last month, FishWise helped to organize and moderate the pre-conference workshop “Exploring the Elements of Effective Seafood Traceability, Including Key Data Elements”. Over 80 people participated in the event, representing a diverse group of stakeholders from the seafood industry, including: retail, government, technology, and the conservation community. The workshop provided an opportunity for these groups to come together to discuss best practices for effective seafood traceability schemes, including the Recommendations by the Presidential Task Force on Combatting Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing and Seafood Fraud, and a project by the Traceability Working Group of the National Fisheries Institute (NFI).

The objectives for the workshop were to: 1) create an environment for industry, NGOs and others to candidly share thoughts and comments on seafood traceability and ways to combat IUU fishing 2) discuss Task Force Recommendations #13, #14, and #15, and brainstorm implementation questions as a group and 3) solicit feedback regarding NFI’s Key Data Elements project.

Given the goals and structure of the workshop, this interactive session focused on broadly gathering ideas, rather than choosing or prioritizing. All contributions were welcomed.

FishWise would like to thank the workshop participants for their time and valuable contribution to the discussion, as well as SeaWeb for hosting the event. Many thanks to our co-moderator, Bill DiMento of High Liners Foods, and to the representatives from NOAA and the State Department for their attendance. FishWise looks forward to working with you more on these important issues, and finding collaborative ways to advance the discussion on seafood traceability.

For a detailed account of the workshop, download the Seafood Summit Traceability Workshop Summary.