The last time you ate seafood at a restaurant did you consider that what showed up on your plate may not have been what you ordered? Chances are the potential for seafood fraud never crossed your mind, but it should have.
Seafood fraud is a common and profitable practice that not only compromises retailers, foodservice professionals and consumers, it also threatens our oceans and human health.
Fish bring life to our planet and connect us all to our shared oceans. Even in the most turbulent times, we find ways to maintain that connection and work toward a better future with our corporate partners across the seafood industry. That was especially true over the last year.
The pandemic disrupted seafood-related business in a multitude of ways, and while some of the chaos has been a shared experience, each business faced their own personal and unique challenges. So how do we take stock in a moment like this to see if we’re still on track to meet shared seafood sustainability goals? Looking at specific areas of work is a good place to start, particularly those areas where we’re able to work together while apart.
From pond to shelf, farmed shrimp goes through a complex supply chain made up of thousands of actors. Data about its farm and country of origin, species, embedded environmental impact, and conditions of production can be easily lost along the way. Compelled by consumer and investor demand for better transparency, retailers are beginning to realize the need for full end-to-end traceability systems to ensure they can track products and feed ingredients back to their source.
The Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability (GDST)—a major industry forum involving more than five hundred leading companies worldwide from across the seafood supply chain—released on Monday, March 16th the first-ever global standards for tracking seafood products from point of origin to point of sale.
These newly released Standards and Guidelines for Interoperable Seafood Traceability Systems, v1.0 are a critical step forward in the fight against illegal fishing and unethical labor practices and are game-changing for an industry under increasing pressure to demonstrate its compliance with high standards for ethical sourcing.
Over the past three years, WWF has helped lead the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability (GDST) to help establish the first-ever comprehensive industry standards for seafood traceability. With more than five dozen companies from around the world and across seafood supply chains sitting at the table, the GDST is drafting standards that will dramatically improve the efficiency, reliability, and affordability of tracking seafood, helping businesses obtain and share the information they need about the origins of seafood products. That will lead to more transparent and reliable seafood supply chains, as consumers increasingly demand and as governments increasingly require.
With an average annual catch of 50,000 metric tons and more than 4,200 fishers, Mahi-Mahi is one of Peru’s most important artisanal fisheries. WWF and its partners have been supporting this Fishery Improvement Project (FIP) since 2013.
This video takes us on a tour inside capacity-building workshops in La Tortuga, La Islilla, and San Jose, where fishing cooperatives, which recently received Mahi-Mahi fishing permits, are being trained on the use of a smart application for documenting landings using mobile phones.
By: Christine Leong and Tal Viskin, Guest Contributors
When it comes to agriculture, what you don’t know can hurt you. That’s why companies are beginning to use blockchain technology to trace food products—notably, seafood, beef, and soy—back to their source. But, according to Accenture’s new report titled “Tracing the Supply Chain: How Blockchain Can Enable Traceability in the Food Industry,” using the technology well takes careful planning and wide collaboration.
In 2009, Sysco Corporation – one of the largest purchasers of seafood in North America – began working with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to assess and improve the sustainability of its seafood supply chain. Through this collaboration, Sysco committed in 2011 to source its top 10 Portico® brand (Sysco’s own seafood brand) frozen and further-processed wild-caught seafood species from fisheries that were either certified to the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) standard, in full assessment for MSC certification or engaged in a comprehensive Fishery Improvement Project (FIP), by 2015.
Continuing its alliance with WWF, in 2016, Sysco committed to further improve the sustainability of its seafood procurement through 2020, incorporating additional elements to guide its seafood procurement practices and standards.
By: Chef Lucas Glanville, Guest Contributor
Billions of people around the world rely on seafood for nutrition and livelihoods, but we are taking more from the oceans than can be replaced. This has serious impacts. As the global population and the demand for seafood grows, it will only become more difficult for communities around the world to have access to seafood.
What we put on our plate matters – tremendously. That’s why, as a chef, I have a responsibility to help shift fishing and farming practices and avoid the depletion of this important resource.
For consumers in Brazil, finding and buying local, sustainable seafood is no easy task.
As it stands, farmed tilapia is the only option for domestic, eco-certified seafood. There are no other domestic, eco-certified farms and fisheries in the country.
With so few local, certified products on the market, it is no surprise that Brazilian consumers are not as aware of seafood sustainability issues than those in other regions, such as the United States and Europe. But with a population approaching 210 million, Brazil is an increasingly critical market for sustainable seafood. That is why World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is working with foodservice giant Sodexo in Brazil to help the catering distributor’s buyers choose more sustainable options.
