Seafood Traceability- what is it and why bother?

Illegal fishing vessels under pursuit (photo credit: World Ocean Review)

A lot of my work in Honduras dealt with the issue of seafood traceability, so I thought I would share a bit about what traceability is and why it is important.Seafood traceability is essential the process of being able to 'trace' a seafood product throughout its supply chain from your dinner plate to the fishing boat and potentially the area of the ocean where it was caught.

Being able to trace seafood is important for a number of reasons, most notably consumer health and safety. Say, for example, you enjoy a delicious lobster dinner at your favourite restaurant - but later find yourself overwhelmed stomach pain that can only indicate some form of food poisoning. Now, if the companies that supplied your lobster dinner have a good traceability program in place, they will be able to track your lobster back through each step of its post-harvest travels and check its treatment at each step in the process to locate where the problem might have occured. With this system in place, it is possible to identify and find any other lobster that might be contaminated and keep someone else from suffering your same fate. The companies that supply the lobster are also better protected, since only the one that caused the problem will be penalised, instead of a blanket sanction across all companies or at the country level, like putitng an import embargo on all lobster from say, Honduras. 

Seafood traceability is also increasing becoming important in combating illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing, generally called IUU fishing. IUU fishing is one of the biggest problems facing global fisheries sustainability, with illegal catches estimated to be between 11 and 26 million tonnes - up to around 30 % of the world's current total catch of marine fish. To combat IUU fishing, some countries and regions, like the European Union, have strict traceability requirements for any seafood imports, which allows buyers to ensure that each fish was legally caught by a licenced fisher and boat using approved means.

Despite its importance, many countries still lack traceability requirements for seafood imports or have gaps in what they require. Having a national traceability system requires coordination among the people and companies throughout a fishery's supply chain, which can be complicated and costly to organise. A fishery supply chain refers to anyone involved in catching, processing and transporting that fishery's products. At a minimum, this includes the fishing crew, boat captains, fish packing houses, exporters, importers, wholesalers, retailers and consumers. Just from this condensed list, there is a high potential for coordination problems. Add to this, the fact that many of these people work in different areas or countries and that there are usually additional people, like middle-men or seafood brokers, involved in different stages of the supply process that make the whole system much more complicated. For a comprehensive traceability system, each of these groups of people need to provide the same information, in the same way, and in such a manner that it can be tracked and accessed if needed. Can you see why implementing traceability can be a headache?!

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Simplified schematic of the seafood supply chain including the fishers/producers, transporters/middle-men, packers, wholesalers and retailers.

Because of these challenges, for many countries, improving seafood traceability comes as a result of market requirements. For example, the work I was involved in in Honduras for traceability was a direct result of increased traceability system requirements for seafood that is imported into the US. Since the US lobster industry relies on the US (over 90% of Honudran-caught lobster is sold to the US), meeting these requirements was a must for the industry's survival. 

The market-based elements of traceability gives you, the consumer, power to help fight IUU fishing. One of the best and easiest ways you can help fight illegal fishing is simply to ask where seafood comes from and how it was caught - and then not buying it if the answer is unknown or questionable. Want to go a step further? Write or call your local political representative and let them know that seafood traceability is important to you. Seafood traceability and labelling laws vary widely across countries and even within different states, so I can't go into much detail here, but if you are interested in finding out more, there are a lot of resources available online. A great place to start is the  Conservation Alliance for Seafood Sustainability website.

IUU estimates from Agnew DJ, Pearce J, Pramod G, Peatman T, Watson R, Beddington JR, et al. (2009) Estimating the Worldwide Extent of Illegal Fishing. PLoS ONE 4(2): e4570. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0004570