Dive Brief:
- The Seafood Industry Research Fund (SIRF) has secured funding to develop technology that can more quickly identify seafood species using closed-tube DNA bar coding, Progressive Grocer reported.
- By creating a tool to prevent product mislabeling and species substitution, SIRF could benefit seafood companies, distributors, retailers, restaurants and consumers alike.
- This tool would be more convenient and more affordable than the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's DNA testing, which could make identification testing more accessible to food establishments of all sizes.
Dive Insight:
Seafood fraud has run rampant in recent years, from the mislabeling of fish as the wrong species to incorrectly labeling whether a fish came from a sustainable source. These problems may have been common practice for some time, but now that consumers are more concerned with transparency and sustainability, truths about these operations are surfacing.
Retailers can benefit two-fold from this type of seafood identification tool. It directly helps retailers by promoting increased supply chain visibility and better handling or preventing major recalls of mislabeled seafood retailers package and sell at their own counters.
But retailers also benefit indirectly from their suppliers — branded seafood processors and manufacturers that use seafood ingredients in their products — by having the same level of traceability in their own supply chains. This can reduce the time and expense costs of any manufacturers' recalls, which can harm retailers' own sales if they're unable to replenish their stock of certain items quickly.