Why Seafood Traceability Is Broken (And What's Really on Your Plate)

0:00A fish caught in the Pacific Ocean might be processed in China. Package in Europe and sold in North America. By the time it reaches a restaurant plate, the original catch information may be nearly impossible to trace. Sea food is one of the most globally traced food commodities in the world, and that complexity creates major transparency changes. According to the UN, food and agricultural organizations, roughly 38% of global seafood production enters international trade, making it one of the most globally distributed food systems on Earth. A single shipment of fish may cross multiple international borders before it reaches a consumer. This is the How to Protect the Ocean podcast for your weekday ocean news update. If you care about staying informed on the ocean every weekday, hit that follow button right now so you don't miss tomorrow's episode. The key question for today is, why is seafood traceability so difficult? Let's look at some of the points, right? Sea food supply chains can involve many steps. We talked about this a little bit yesterday, but I'm going to go over it again today. These include fishing vessels,

1:01transshipman vessels, processing plants, exporters, importers, distributors, restaurants, and then you have multiple within each of those layers. Each step creates an opportunity for the information to be lost or altered. We talked about that with seafood fraud and the mislabeling last episode. If you want to check that out, you can go to yesterday's episode. For example, fish caught in Indonesian waters may be transferred to a refrigerated cargo vessel at sea, shipped to a processing facility in Thailand or China, exported to Europe or North America, and then distributed throughout wholesalers before reaching a grocery store. This process is common across the global seafood industry. This is not something that's new. A 2020 report from World Wildlife Fund and Global Fishing Watch found that seafood supply chains often include multiple transshipments and processing stages, making it difficult to track the origin of a product without robust documentation. One of the biggest traceability challenges occurs during transshipment. When the fish caught by fishing vessels are transferred to a larger refrigerated cargo vessels at sea,

2:02the ships are known as reefers, can transport seafood directly to ports thousands of kilometers away. Because the transfer happens far from poor inspections, the origin of the cash can become difficult to verify. Fisheries observers all oftentimes are on these boats, the fishing boats or the reefers, the ones that take on the shipments, and they start looking at what's being transferred over. They make their notes, they try to identify stuff, but there have been fisheries observers who've come out and said, hey, it's really difficult to tell when the fishing vessels that are catching the fish come in and then they're transferring over the fish. They've already slightly processed the fish. They've cut off the heads, they've cut off the fins, it's just the bodies, and sometimes it's difficult when it's really the tails are off, the heads are off, the fins are off, it's really difficult to tell what they are. Sometimes you can't tell it's between a shark and a tuna, and other times it's really difficult with other fish. It's a difficult process when this transshipment happens, especially at sea, because you're not necessarily getting the DNA tests, you're not necessarily getting first person's view, because the catch has been processed already, so it can be really difficult.

3:02Research published in Science Advanced has found that transshipment activity is widespread in distant water fishing fleets, so any fishing fleet that goes beyond their national borders, so they're exclusive economic zone, especially in the Pacific and Indian Ocean. This practice can obscure where seafood was caught and whether it was harvested legally. Processing also removes many of the physical features, which I mentioned, used to identify these species. So just to go more into it, whole fish that can be identified by characteristics such as body shape, fin placement, or color patterns. If that's not there, when the seafood is processed into products such as fish fillets, fish sticks, serimi, and squid rings, those identifying features disappear. So once the seafood is reduced to small pieces or ground products, even experienced seafood inspectors that are at sea cannot reliably identify the species visually. So this is one of the reasons why we rely heavily on DNA testing to verify the seafood identity. A landmark study published in PLOS-1 found that genetic testing revealed widespread seafood mislabeling, particularly in processed products where species identification

4:03was impossible without the DNA analysis. And DNA analysis didn't really come into the seafood industry for a long time. It's only been recent where we've been able to use that on a regular basis, but even then it doesn't really come back as fast as we would expect. It's really hard to do it when you're doing like a port inspection where the boat is dropping off their stuff and going back as soon as they can. Seafood also frequently travels through multiple countries for processing. So for example, Alaska and Pollock caught in the U.S. waters is often shipped to China for flaying and packaging that exported back to North America or even Europe as frozen fish products. So you would think that if you were able to bring it, I mean look at a climate change problem here when you're shipping it halfway across the world just to ship it back. But when you are doing it that far, you don't have control over how that's processed or one country doesn't have control over the other country of how that's processed. You just trust that it becomes that seafood, but they can be putting in, and it doesn't matter what country, they can be putting in other mixtures of seafood that you just don't know is happening, and especially when they're bringing it together like a filet or a fish stick or something, you don't know if it's just one fish or if it's just like a blend of all these different fishes.

5:05So this happens because processing costs can be lower in large seafood processing hubs overseas. So that's why they go from the U.S. to China back to North America or even Europe. So similarly squid, which we're going to be talking about on Friday on the interview with Dr. Marin Kuzah, caught in the Southwest Atlantic, maybe processed in China or Vietnam, then exported worldwide as frozen squid rings or even calamari, which we all love in restaurants, which I think I'm going to have to change the way I look at calamari after you hear Friday's episode. You might want to do it. I know I'm going to do it after I did the interview. You're going to want to do it after you hear that episode. These complex processing routes make it difficult for consumers to know where seafood actually originated. Scientists and regulars are exploring new traceability tools to address these challenges. So DNA barcoding is obviously one. It allows scientists to identify fish species by analyzing the small fragments of genetic material. Some researchers have used this method to detect seafood substitution in restaurants, grocery stores, and supply chains, which we'll talk about again on Friday. The technique compares DNA from the seafood sample

6:07to a global reference database of species. Also, you had electronic catch documentation. So governments are increasingly requiring digital catch documentation. So programs such as the USC Food Import Monitoring Program, the SIMP, which is kind of an interesting acronym, requires importers to report detailed catch information including fish vessel identity, catch location, and harvest method. But at least you'll be able to pass on that information. Satellite tracking, which you talked a couple of weeks ago, tracking systems such as automatic identification systems, so AIS and vessel monitoring systems, VMS, allow regulators and researchers to track fishing vessels activity. However, some of these fishing vessels will actually turn off their AIS or VMS when they're in areas they should not be in. Organizations like global fishing watch, analyze satellite data to detect fishing patterns and potential illegal fishing. There's also block train tracking systems, so some seafood companies are experimenting with blockchain technology, which creates digital records, which cannot be easily altered. These systems allow seafood products

7:08to be tracked through each step of the supply chain. From the fishing vessel all the way to the retailer. So pilot programs have been tested in fisheries such as tuna and shrimp supply chain, and hopefully we'll be able to look at what those studies reveal when they go through that testing. So tomorrow we're gonna focus on a seafood product where traceability is especially difficult. We're gonna be talking about squid. Unlike many fish species, squid fisheries are often poorly monitored, highly globalized, and frequently processed before reaching markets. So that combination makes squid one of the hardest seafood products to track. So if you want to learn more about that, you want to tune in tomorrow's episode, but you don't want to miss it. Hit that follow button. And also if you think someone who wants to know more about seafood is going to take value out of this or get a lot of value out of this, send this episode to them. See what they think. I'd love to hear your feedback. Go to speakupforblue.com, forward slash feedback. Let me know if you have a question, a comment, a concern. How do you deal with seafood? How are you enjoying these episodes? How are you enjoying this new method that I'm doing the five days a week, four days, so a little Monday to Thursday,

8:08and then an interview on Friday. I'd love to hear all those thoughts, any of those thoughts, just a little bit of those thoughts. Go to speakupforblue.com, forward slash feedback. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.