Traceability

Tracing farmed fish and seafood products as they travel through the supply chain is a means to demonstrate to consumers, retailers, and export markets that the products they are purchasing come from aquaculture operations which operate in a safe and sustainable way. Aquaculture certification systems include a traceability element to ensure that the integrity of certified products is maintained from “farm to fork.”

Traceability systems can identify where a product is at any given time, where it has been prior to its current location, and what was done to it along the way. A sophisticated traceability system can track finfish from egg to juvenile to adult fish (and feed), through to the marketplace, and shellfish from larvae to seed to final sale. This maintains confidence in Canada’s farmed seafood systems.

Traceability systems: Tracing products through the value chain

Traceability is a way to monitor, maintain, demonstrate, and verify safety, nutrition and other aquaculture product attributes. Traceability systems can identify where a product is at any given time, where it has been prior to its current location, and what was done to it along the way. A sophisticated traceability system tracks finfish from egg to juvenile to adult fish (and feed) through to the marketplace, as well as shellfish from larvae to seed to final sale. This helps to maintain domestic and international consumer and market confidence in Canada’s farmed seafood.

• Case  study: Tracing salmon from egg to plate

Traceability is also an important mechanism for ensuring product safety. For example, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency mandates that every bag of oysters, clams or mussels harvested from Canadian waters be tagged with the location, time, and date of harvest so that if there is ever a health concern linked to shellfish, regulators have a way to trace the specific harvest location, recall other products from that same location, and close the area to further harvesting. These traceability requirements are consistent with an international protocol to which Canada is a signatory and represent another facet of the Canadian Shellfish Sanitation Program.

• Seafood safety controls

Traceability serves a third purpose for businesses along the aquaculture supply chain which want to track their products for internal accounting and other business reasons:

• Feed manufacturers can trace all feed ingredients and where feed is delivered.
• Breeders can trace all fish in breeding stocks and where eggs are delivered.
• Nursery operators can track sources of hatchery seed and where shellfish is delivered.
• Hatchery operators can trace the source of eggs and genetic identify of fish, records of feed, medication and other inputs, and where fish is delivered.
• Farm operators can trace the source of fish by hatchery, records of feed, medication and other inputs, and where fish is sent for processing.
• Transporters of live fish can trace the source, destination. and delivery for each unit of fish.
• Fish processors can trace the sources of all fish received, the tracing of all fish sent for delivery by batch and lot numbers, product labelling, and purchase order numbers.

An “A” for Traceability Readiness

Canada’s aquaculture industry is ready and well-placed to meet the increasing international demands for traceability. A 2010 study commissioned by Fisheries and Oceans Canada to evaluate traceability systems for Canadian farmed finfish and shellfish gave a high rating overall to Canada’s aquaculture industry for traceability readiness. The farmed-salmon sector set the gold standard by receiving a grade of A+ and the shellfish industry received a grade of A.

Setting international standards for traceability

Canada continues to be actively involved in the development of new international standards for fish and seafood traceability. Fisheries and Oceans Canada and representatives from the Canadian aquaculture industry sat on a working group of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) which drafted new traceability standards for farmed finfish and is developing a standard for shellfish traceability.

These standards ensure that there is a common format for documenting traceability that can be used by producers around the world.

• ISO traceability standards
  • Farmed finfish (ISO 12877:2011)

More information:

• Measuring Sustainability
  • Certification