National Fish & Seafood, a national supplier/partner of seafood to major retailers, distributors and food service chains across the U.S., has announced the global launch of SourceTrace™, a cloud-based mobile application for aqua farmers everywhere to manage traceability. This further strengthens the company's focus on sustainability, and leadership in creating robust aquaculture best practices for the world to follow in continually improving the product produced by the aquaculture industry.
The Penver Group has been selected for the first pilot of SourceTrace after collaborating in April of 2015 with National Fish & Seafood to become the first ever group to achieve four-star BAP status in India, for shrimp or any species, the highest such achievement in the BAP program. Now they are working together to launch the first ever traceability software solution to the Indian shrimp industry. The software will be debuted publically at the upcoming GOAL 2015 conference in Vancouver, BC, Canada. It is currently being piloted in partnership with aqua farms in India.
National Fish & Seafood Aquaculture and Sustainability Specialist, Rajkumar Gollapalli, said, "This will revolutionize and streamline the critical work of traceability for aquaculture leaders around the world. It makes this process faster, easier, more reliable and more efficient."
The cloud-based technology enables complete traceability of all parameters associated with aqua farms, which can be digitally entered into an Android-enabled system, on-site, and retrieved and analysed by farm managers and National Fish & Seafood's dedicated aquaculture team. Data can be entered and retrieved in real-time and will capture the complete traceability details of the production system right from the hatchery to the farms and up to the harvesting stage. This application is expected to increase the efficiency and transparency of the entire supply chain. It can also maintain all documents including legal documents, licenses, effluent records, and minutes of meetings and health certificates, which are required for certifying the farms with Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP).
Jeff Sedacca, President, Shrimp Division of National Fish & Seafood said, "We are so pleased to see this industry advancing thanks to technology innovations like SourceTrace, which empower us to collaborate and work more efficiently and with greater transparency than ever before. This is a great benefit to aquafarmers, buyers and wholesalers alike."