Building A Traceability Data Infrastructure to Track Provenance and Quality in Australian Seafood Supply Chains

The Challenge

Mud crabs (Scylla spp.) are a valuable commercial seafood product in Australia, with a national market worth approximately $48 million per year. However, the high demand and price for mud crabs make them prone to illegal fishing and black marketing. Preventing illegitimate harvesting and trade of seafood is a high priority for state governments.

Mud crab fishery regulations and mandatory reporting requirements vary by jurisdiction, with few mechanisms in place to carry collected data through the supply chain and differentiate between illegal and legitimate harvests. 

Therefore, the development of standard data collection practices and traceable data are important aspects to enable fishery sustainability, industry viability, and the delivery of safe products to market. 

The Response

We are supporting the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries in bringing together researchers, government regulators and industry representatives to build a digital traceability data infrastructure for the Australian seafood sector, using the mud crab supply chain as a model. 

The resulting traceability system will allow end-to-end tracking of individual mud crabs through the supply chain, improving traceability and generating benefits for seafood producers and other stakeholders. 

Our partners have been collaborating with regulators and industry stakeholders to map the mud crab supply chain and to define a minimum set of traceability data and metadata standards, including vocabularies, to ensure that data are described in a consistent manner. Moreover, they are building a digital data infrastructure – including a smart tagging system, electronic app and mainframe traceability platform – to track key mud crab provenance and quality data from harvest to buyer. The approach will be aligned with the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability, a mechanism for transforming the sustainability of global seafood supply through digital traceability.

The developed data standards and technologies are likely to be transferable to other food commodities and industries, and will support a range of research applications. This innovative traceability system has the potential to significantly boost Australia’s production, distribution and consumption of high-quality and sustainable seafood.

“Through collaborative innovation, we’re pioneering a digital traceability ecosystem that not only enhances transparency in the mud crab supply chain but sets a precedent for sustainable seafood industries both nationally and internationally.”

 – Dr Donna Cawthorn, Project Leader, Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries

Who Will Benefit

• Seafood industry
• Researchers 
• Government agencies and regulators
• Other industries

The Partners

• Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries 
• ARDC
• University of Technology Sydney 
• Sydney Fish Market 
• Commercial mud crabbers in Queensland and seafood supply chain operators nationwide 
• Agriculture Victoria

Target Outcomes

The traceability platform will generate multi-stakeholder benefits, including a:

• mechanism for regulators to monitor catch, effort and quota compliance and distinguish legal from illegal products.
• vehicle for commercial crabbers to demonstrate that their crabs are legally and sustainably caught, and to describe product quality and fishing operations to buyers and consumers.
• means to identify and track mud crabs from capture to market, thereby upholding supply chain integrity, potentially opening new markets, and demonstrating transparency of the supplied product.
• secure, efficient real-time pathway to capture, store and exchange data between stakeholders.

Key Resources

• Read the newsletter article in the Saltwater Solutions newsletter (page 5)