Traceability in the fish sector from research to commercial business

The last twenty years, the focus on traceability has grown from total obscurity to full attention of the European Parliament legislation activities. Due to the latest legislation the fish sector has been introduced to more strict legislation than the rest of the food sector. To meet these demands it was decided by the Danish Government four years ago, to create a consortium with representatives from
research, applied research, private innovative companies, the sectorial branch organizations and the authorities to meet the future challenges. The result of the work with traceability are solutions that have the backing of all the links in the
value chain from the primary producer (the fisherman) to the retailer both nationally and internationally. The Danish fish and shellfish export
is the fifth biggest in the world. The development of a central database structure,
the specification demands, the individual needs from companies and the applications to the existing systems both at the authorities and private levels
have been solved. A study of the perception of traceability has been done in the processing industry and interviews with all the major retailers in Europe
have been conducted. To collect and use the traceability information from the fishermen, it has been necessary to develop a new IT platform that can communicate with the official data collecting systems. At present nearly 90 % of all fish landed in Denmark is registrede in the central database, and the number of processing industries, wholesalers and retailers that are using the database are increasing steeply. In the near future another major step will be taken, due to an extensive investment program financed by the European Community, which will use the traceability data, from showing interactive information to the consumers to processing planning in the processing industries