Tracing Fishy Risks With Blockchain Tech Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19-related risks in seafood supply chainsThe COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the challenges and inadequacies of the global seafood supply chain, according to a report prepared by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

More than 120 workers at Oregon-based Pacific Seafood, a Newport seafood processing plant, also tested positive for the virus in an outbreak so large it contributed to Oregon's highest single-day count of new cases since the start of the pandemic.

The owners of a seafood processor in Juneau, Alaska thought they did everything right to keep their business safely running during the pandemic.

It requires traceability for seafood at risk of illegal fishing and seafood fraud through the U.S. Seafood Import Monitoring Program, which currently applies to 13 species of imported fish - including blue crab, cod and tuna - tracing them from the boat to the U.S. border.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the CDC, conducts food-borne illness investigations, provides recommendations to the medical community and "Guidance for employers and workers performing seafood processing operations in onshore facilities and aboard vessels offshore," and uses the Oracle blockchain and the IBM Cloud to support its COVID-19 data collection efforts.

Seafood fraud in the U.S.The U.S. seafood industry's fraud-related issues have exacerbated with the pandemic.

Study after study has proven the existence of fraud in the U.S. seafood industry: The Office of the Attorney General in New York found that over 25% of seafood at supermarkets in the state was mislabeled; a study by University of California in Los Angeles and Loyola Marymount found that nearly half of the sushi served in Los Angeles was not what it was purported to be; in its seafood fraud investigation, the ocean-protection foundation Oceana found that 21% of fish tested - species not included under the existing federal traceability program - were mislabeled.

ConclusionWith the emergence of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations published a report titled "Blockchain Application in Seafood Value Chains" to raise governmental and international awareness on the role of blockchain in tracking seafood mislabeling and fraud as well as supplying reliable data and product origin in the seafood industry in order for mainstream adoption of blockchain to occur.

The report has guided the seafood industry into the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability and issued the first-ever global standards for tracking seafood products from point of origin to point of sale in order to verify the authenticity of the food item and validate the sustainability efforts of the producer.

Many seafood companies have joined blockchain initiatives, such as IBM's blockchain-based Food Trust, Envisible's Wholechain system, the VeChain Blockchain Traceability Platform, Australia-based Two Hands and Norway-based SeafoodChain AS.Nevertheless, according to two recent studies, there is still a need for a global network of real-time human disease surveillance systems, which can be based on the use of blockchain technology to track the spread of COVID-19 via the seafood value chain across the world.