Guidance for businesses navigating seafood traceability improvements

Working together as a jointly funded  collaboration, FishWise, Future of Fish (FoF), Global Food Traceability Center(GFTC), and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) have released two documents to help address questions commonly asked by the seafood industry. “Taking the First Steps Towards Full-Chain Seafood Traceability: A Preliminary Guide for Industry” and “Recommendations for Addressing Seafood Traceability and Key Data Elements” are complementary guides for companies looking to implement or advance traceability in their seafood supply chains.

“Taking the First Steps Towards Full-Chain Seafood Traceability: A Preliminary Guide for Industry” provides companies with initial steps for determining which seafood traceability technologies best fit their needs, while understanding the potential return on investment for these technologies. With new seafood traceability regulations, companies are struggling to find technology providers that can meet all of the traceability functions required to verify seafood traceability. This guide provides helpful steps in determining a set of technology solutions both internally within their company as well as across their supply chains.

The “Recommendations for Addressing Seafood Traceability and Key Data Elements” document outlines the level of seafood traceability that companies should commit to for both wild and farmed seafood products, as well as which key data elements (KDEs) they should implement in their traceability systems in lieu of a widely adopted, universal KDE list. Because industry best practices and norms for traceability are continually evolving, this document outlines an adaptive management approach for making traceability improvements.

Our collaboration hopes that these recommendations will be helpful for both the seafood industry as well as NGOs guiding companies on seafood traceability solutions. To learn more about other resources from the seafood traceability collaboration, visit here.