Major achievements in METHODOLOGY

Seafood traceability to ensure consumer confidence: METHODOLOGY

A major achievement during the first reporting period has been a further development of specific elements to be used in a traceability vocabulary for communication of information along the seafood value chain. A translation to all major European languages has been made. An interesting development that has been added to the project activities is the decision to add a GIS server to traceability systems, thereby adding a useful map of the fishing area of commercial fishing vessels called ‘Tracefish map service’. The map service provides the user with two maps sent to a given, requested e-mail address from a nautical position. The map is precise enough to give the buyers/customer adequate catch area information and is inaccurate enough not to reveal the exact catch position for other competing commercial fishing vessels. For this reason it can be accepted by the fishermen.

The traceability vocabulary being developed is the key for the practical use of the existing Tracefish standard ( www.tracefish.org). When implemented the industry has easy access to the documentation of the most important variables in the standard and a translation of the variables into the most important languages.

People in this project