As commercial and regulatory demands for full-chain seafood traceability increase worldwide, more and more stakeholders are recognising the added value of:
- aligning and standardising the key data elements (KDEs) associated with seafood products;
- establishing data verification and quality guidelines to reduce costs and increase reliability;
- adopting an IT architecture for interoperability to allow easy and secure data exchange; and
- promoting the harmonisation of emerging national regulations affecting seafood traceability.
Taken together, these are the fundamental elements of a pre-competitive framework for globally interoperable seafood traceability. However, designing and adopting such a framework requires industry and stakeholders to work together across geographic regions, market sub-sectors, and different parts of the seafood supply chain.
The Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability is intended to make this possible by engaging key stakeholders – including industry vendors and regulators, and relevant scientific and civil society representatives and experts – to participate in developing cost-effective solutions.
To facilitate the discussion process, the Dialogue is organised into three working groups tasked with addressing the four interconnected issues mentioned above.
Working Group 1: Defining, Aligning and Standardising Key Data Elements
Working Group 2: IT Architecture; Data Access & Security
Working Group 3: Policy & Regulatory Alignment
To find out more visit:
Key stakeholders include:
- fishing companies (including SMEs)
- seafood processors
- consumer goods companies
- distributors
- retailers
- catch documentation experts
- fisheries monitoring experts
- technology vendors
- environmental experts.