Everything which used to be reliable and stable in
seafood has changed… so what's next?
Professor Thomas Gilovich of Cornell University wrote an engaging book some decades ago titled How We Know What Isn’t So. It’s about our human propensity to form beliefs which were never true.
That’s a bit different from what’s happening in the seafood
industry right now, where quite a bit used to be true, but isn’t
so any longer. Nearly everything traditionally reliable about the seafood
supply chain has now changed.
These aren’t misperceptions. Truths we used to rely on have
been thrown overboard.
Case in point:
What Used To Be So… |
…What
We Now Know |
|
Our labor
force would turn over, but was generally stable and returned year after year |
We face constant worker shortages in plants and in ports |
|
China’s processing
industry was an insatiable source of raw material demand |
China’s Zero-COVID policies idle processing facilities, killing
demand |
|
Fuel and
transportation costs would fluctuate but over the long term were fairly
predictable and inflation was a non-issue |
Fuel costs are almost 50% higher than a year ago, influencing
transportation and other costs of doing business |
|
Growing openness
between nations increased economic interdependency |
War drove international sanctions, closing the Russian market
to outside seafood |
Is there a war on the global seafood supply chain? Probably
not. Does it feel like there’s a war on the global seafood supply chain?
From inside the industry, facing this volatility and the invalidation of our
prior means of operating, it can absolutely seem that way.
Seafood companies need to rethink processing. We need to
seek new markets to replace the old ones which are now closed. We need new
trading partners who are open for business. We care about the location of trading
partners more than ever before because of port and transportation cost issues.
Essentially, seafood companies need a new way to do
business. And given that change seems to be the one thing which is consistent, the
new way of doing business needs to enable our businesses to become more nimble
than they are today – the best thing we can do is prepare our businesses to
withstand future volatility.
Are you ready?
Consumers want to buy seafood sourced through sustainable fishing practices. At least, they say they do when asked. As industry practitioners, we certainly want that, too. To position against sustainable fishing practices is like arguing with motherhood, baseball and apple pie.
There are many different and overlapping initiatives underway right now – all inspiring. The seafood industry is making great strides in sustainability and traceability, but it’s clear there is a lot more work to be done.
The current state of play is certification, where participants adopt practices to ensure sustainability according to documented standards and undergo audits and examinations in order to earn the right to advertise their product as processed per the standard. This is all well and good, and is a practice followed in other business domains too. It makes sense.
But, the certification game falls short of our industry’s aspirations, for two reasons –
1. We’re too good at it.
Certification is done with respect to a standard. In the seafood industry, there is no shortage of standards. And that’s the problem. In the words of a longtime friend, “I love standards, especially because there are so many of them." SeafoodSource offers an excellent guide to certifications and eco-labels. The fact that this guidebook – aimed at seafood industry insiders – fills 322 pages is indicative of the issue. We’re so good at creating new standards that we’ve built a maze we can barely sort out ourselves, much less expect the consumer to understand.
2. The wrong fish still slip through
Certification is certainly a logical step – no issue there. But, certification often relies on attestations and audits. That leaves gaps, which data, systems and enforcement aren’t currently equipped to address. That’s not the same thing as a fully transparent supply chain from sea to plate, which is the real aspiration. Our industry is in need of an audit trail which spans all stages of production and processing, for each final product produced.
There’s no silver bullet – moving the needle on traceability
requires problem-solving, development and evangelism across a wide range of
stakeholders. We’re all going to need to pitch in, and to study paradigms which
have been successfully adopted in other verticals.
How do you feel about your firm’s role in achieving sea-to-plate traceability?
1. This is a great time to be in the seafood industry. Seafood consumption is strong, powered by the continuation of the prepare-at-home trend triggered by the pandemic, and by post-pandemic resumption of restaurant and food-and-beverage business. And, depending on the sector, retail prices have soared, in some cases 50% - 60% within the calendar year and 140% year over year.2. This is a terrible time to be in the seafood industry. If you produce, process or ship seafood, you’re struggling with labor shortages which make it challenging to deliver on your own commitments. And with ships sitting awaiting access to bottlenecked ports and continued challenges with closed borders, you’re concerned about the ability of your traditional suppliers to deliver on their commitments to you.3. Completely unrelated to the pandemic, US Customs and Border Protection decided to take action to restrict a decade-old process used to ship whitefish from Alaska to the US east coast (if you’re not familiar with this one, it’s an entertaining look at how the lure of opportunity drives ingenuity… an excellent and informative podcast from Intrafish is here, which will enable you to see the humor and audacity in this video.)
