Wesley Malcorps was invited as a speaker to the IFFO Annual Conference in South Africa to talk about seafood sustainability and the importance of traceability. In the presentation, he explained “Sustainability is not just about the environment, but includes many aspects, such as social and economic aspects as well as fish welfare indicators. If we don’t include them all, we are not really talking about sustainability. We should also consider sustainability to be a journey, not an endpoint. This is crucial, because we want to avoid saying that something is sustainable, because this can limit further improvements. Traceability is key to understand this journey - Where things come from? Where are we, and where do we want to go? What (data) do we need to understand this journey? Some of this information can then be transferred to relevant stakeholders along the supply chain and final consumers.”

He then went on to set out a vision of why the use of a shared network along the supply chain is the way forward. “This could be done by verified manual input and using IoT devices, with a trusted database that is not managed by a single authority, immutable, decentralized and hard to hack. It is important to note, that in a shared network, participants need incentives to share data, and they need to feel that protected, and that they are not being monitored.”

For further detail, please download a PDF copy of the presentation slides

An explanation of blockchain technology can be found in the following video:

Further information about the conference presentations and discussions can be found in the following articles:

• IFFO Conference 2023: Key takeaways from the Challenges and Opportunities

• Aquafeed.com article: Precise nutrition and sustainability, key discussions at IFFO annual conference

Our thanks to IFFO for the invitation and for the photographs used in this article