Traceability & Storied Seafood creating Demand-Pull toward Responsibility
Whole-chain traceability is not just about being able to trace the steps in a supply chain backward or forward for recall purposes, nor is it just about demonstrating the legality and authenticity of the seafood that a supply chain has brought to your table. It is also about telling you the story of the fisherman or the fish farmer that harvested your fish, the processor that cut your fish, the wholesaler that brought you the fish, and the chef that prepared it for you. It is about the men and women that toil and battle the elements, that get up well before the sun is up, and that work long days and nights and over weekends to bring us the seafood we enjoy and we benefit from so much.
It is also provides you, the consumer, with the means to reward all these people. Just simply by asking for it, or in the case of QR code based traceability systems, just by scanning the code on a fish tag, a label, or on a menu. Both of these activities tells the fishmonger, the chef, the retailer that you want to know the story behind your seafood. This creates a demand-pull, and these buyers may pay a premium to offer you this service, or, at the very least, with quality and price being equal, select the fish with a story over one without. This can incentivise fishers, fish farmers and processors to collaborate and enter their catch data for each trip that links to their ‘master data’ — captain name, fishing vessel name, how they fish etc. Less importantly, but certainly more fun, is when the fisher shares with you their scariest experience at sea, their favourite book, how best to cook their fish, or even better, more regularly engages with you sharing pictures of the most beautiful sunset he’s just seen, or the funniest joke he just heard.
One such system that allows for story telling is FishTrax. Based off FishTrax Systems, an electronic fishery information platform, the application allows consumers to scan a QR code or go to the FishTrax website and input the trace code to see where the fish they are enjoying came from, who caught it etc (input the code D02728 here). The platform also provides the fisher with analytics on where the peolpe are that are consuming their fish, and to see their feedback. Consumers can even message the fishers to say thank you.
However, these systems are mostly being used by short, cooperative supply chains in developed nations whereby either the fisher pays for the subscription to create demand-pull back to his or her boat, or by processors that channel that market force back to his or her facility. In developing nations supply chains are more fragmented, the costs of subscriptions to such solutions are high, and the costs would probably outweigh the benefits to these fishers and fish farmers.
Rather than one actor subscribing to a centralised system, if each actor was rewarded for inputting data about their catch, about who they are, their vessel, their facility, their story, then a lot more storied fish could enter the market. Fishcoin tokens are designed to allow buyers, such as importers in developed nations, to buy them at an exchange and provide them to their suppliers in return for the key data elements needed to import the seafood from exporters in developing nations.
The tokens move up the fragmented supply chains alongside the fiat currency used to buy the fish, and the fish move down the supply chain. In addition to these key data elements required by customs, the fishers could be rewarded with extra tokens for their story and their images. A system that works across borders and for fragmented supply chains that both incentivises key data element capture to access markets but can also create demand-pull from fishers willing to put their name on their product and be more responsible.
