Eurofish is a member of a consortium that has won a project that will develop, among other outputs, ways to guarantee seafood product safety, quality, and traceability. The purpose is to counter a certain scepticism among some consumers about fresh and farmed seafood.
This article was featured in Eurofish Magazine 2 2023
FishEUTrust, as the project is known, will establish five Co-creation Living Labs in the Mediterranean Basin, the North Sea and the Atlantic Sea. These will enable innovation and process validation and demonstrate the project’s supply chain solutions. Examples of supply-chain innovation include creating sustainable business models, protecting cultural and culinary heritage, short food supply chains, exploiting underused fish species, and innovative engagement activities to stimulate positive consumer behaviour. The project will also develop tools to maximize trust by guaranteeing the quality, safety, and traceability of seafood products based on smart control systems (sensors), metagenomics, genetic biomarkers, isotopic techniques, and labelling/product passport/blockchain). These tools will be integrated into a single digital FishEUTrust data platform. The project started in June 2022 and will end May 2026. The project involves 22 partners from 14 EU countries, and is coordinated by Institut Jozef Stefan, Slovenia. As leader of Work Package 3, Eurofish’s role is to develop novel business models to increase trust and efficiency in the seafood supply chains. More information about the project can be found at: https://fisheutrust.org/
Within the same call, the European Commission also awarded a “sister project”, SEA2SEE. This project will use modern technology to reassure consumers about the sustainability of the seafood they eat. Current seafood traceability tools and services have the potential to take advantage of novel blockchain technologies to obtain a wide range of data making sustainable seafood practices more visible to consumers. The SEA2SEE project will fill in existing seafood traceability gaps through development and demonstration of an innovative end-to-end blockchain traceability model throughout the seafood value chain and professional and consumer applications. This to increase trust and social acceptance of sustainably fished and farmed seafood. The project will provide technological solutions to answer the need of a valuable source of data collected throughout the whole seafood value chain, verified, and covering inputs from diverse stakeholders. For that purpose, a specific focus will be put on active commitment of stakeholders and real empowerment of consumers through the implementation of societal and sectoral strategies for co-creation, communication and awareness raising. The SEA2SEE project started in July 2022 and will end June 2026. The project involves 14 partners from six EU countries, and is coordinated by Smartwater Planet SL, Spain. More information about the project can be found at: http://www.sea2see.eu/
For more information regarding the FishEUTrust project, contact:
Prof. Dr. Nives Ogrinc
Jožef Stefan Institute,
Ljubljana
Slovenia.
+386 1 588 53 87
info-fisheutrust@ijs.si
For more information regarding Sea2See project, contact:
Dr. Carlos Mazorra de Quero
Director of Innovation and R&D
Smartwater Planet, S.L.
Madrid
Spain
+34 618810499
contact@sea2see.eu