Informed consumer decisions are crucial for sustainable living, yet navigating seafood consumption complexities is challenging. Without standardised information on health, sustainability and climate impacts, consumers struggle to make informed choices. The VeriFish project addresses these challenges by developing a verifiable indicator framework for consumers, retailers, policymakers and fishermen. This framework clarifies seafood's health benefits, climate impacts, and sustainability.
Navigating into a sea of indicators:
Last week, Trust-IT and COMMpla’s VeriFish project teams convened in Tromsø for a two-day workshop hosted by Nofima, the Norwegian Food Research Institute. Participants engaged in rigorous and collaborative brainstorming sessions focused on building and agreeing on such a complex list of indicators.
During the workshop, the consortium commenced the development of a comprehensive framework of indicators that encompass environmental sustainability, socio- economics sustainability, origin and provenance, processing methods, as well as health and nutritional aspects. This framework is designed to be referenced against reliable data sources, enabling producers to self-assess their sustainability path of practices and communicate effectively about what sustainable fishing entails. Its preliminary version is expected at the end of October, 2024, while its final version, to be released in Spring 2025, under the lead of EUROFIR Aisbl, will serve as a foundation for delivering verifiable information on seafood sustainability to consumers, industry stakeholders, and policymakers.
This framework integrates the three pillars of sustainability and aquafood health for future communication campaigns. A few sample use cases are included in the narrative to illustrate how the indicator framework can be applied in various contexts. By presenting clear and trustworthy indicators, VeriFish aims to empower stakeholders to offer products that facilitate informed decisions regarding sustainable seafood consumption and production.
The second day of the meeting focused on the digital tools to facilitate dissemination of such indicators to a number of different actors in the seafood production chain. Plans were made for a web dashboard that will provide access to factsheets detailing data for about 14 identified sample species. Additionally, a prototype Web App will be developed, allowing consumers to scan a QR code to access information about specific species, including their sustainability ranking based on a scoring and traffic-light system, with simulated data supplied by the producers.
Utilising the indicator framework, alongside guidelines and recommendations from a Community of Practice, targeted outreach activities across Europe will promote awareness of the benefits associated with consuming sustainable and locally sourced seafood.
During the meeting we were pleased with a key talk from Martin Skaug, Director of Communications at the Norwegian Seafood Council (NSC) . His presentation highlighted the NSC’s initiatives to boost the global value of Norwegian seafood, focusing on market insights, marketing strategies, and risk management.
VeriFish at the International Eurofish Conference:
The International Eurofish Conference aims to explore the potential within fisheries and aquaculture to adopt circular economy practices. Experts from several countries will address the audience offering new ideas, good practices, and solutions for the future. The conference will include participants from Spain and many other European countries, from the European Commission, FAO/GFCM, countries in the Black Sea region, the Caucasus, and Central Asia representing government institutions, civil society, private sector, and intergovernmental organisations.
The VeriFish Communication coordinator Ixai Salvo Borda from Eurofish, had the opportunity to introduce VeriFish at the International Eurofish Conference, to a wide range of key stakeholders, including representatives from both the fishing and aquaculture sectors, governmental authorities from over 29 countries and international organisations (FAO, EFCA, GFCM, EUROPECHE, etc..), and retailers, fisheries consultancy firms etc.
Focus on Circular Economy and Side-Streams:
The key significant takeaway of the conference was the emphasis on sustainability within a circular economy framework. For the VeriFish project, this translated into discussions about how side-streams and by-products from fisheries and aquaculture can be transformed into sustainable aquafood products.
Engagement with International Stakeholders:
The conference allowed the project, and Eurofish, to engage in discussions with various international bodies ( the second deputy of the Fisheries department of the Greek ministry of Agriculture from Iceland, members of the Spanish fishing producers (OPROMAR, ORPAGU, OPESCAYA) and research institutes in Spain (AZTI, CETMAR, IEO) and industry leaders who are working towards similar sustainability goals. The conversations serve to visualise the critical points for them in terms of sustainability; almost all of them see the environment and fish availability as the main issues for sustainability. Exploitation and production are the main concerns.
It was a good opportunity to underscore the role of VeriFish in driving sustainable practices within fisheries and aquaculture, focusing not just on primary production but also on the innovative use of side-streams, contributing to a circular economy in the sector.
The project is going to be presented also in Conxemar, one of the biggest Exhibitions for Frozen aquafood products in the world promoting the transition towards a responsible food system.
Trust-IT Services is the Coordinator of the VeriFish project and plays a crucial role in the consortium, ensuring timely and high-quality results through efficient administrative, technical, organisational, and financial coordination.
Trust- IT Services is also involved in Work Package 2 (WP2), developing scoring systems and guidelines for communication through the use of the indicator framework. Contributions are also in the WP3 to develop a comprehensive communication and outreach campaign and prototype media products, such as the brading materials, VeriFish trailers series, addressed to different audiences. The WP3 also includes the VeriFish maintenance and animation of the Community of Practices where Trust-IT creates and guarantees that the engaged stakeholders represent all the groups needed and are active along the entire project.
COMMpla, Trust- IT affiliated entity, provides key actions related to prototyping the VeriFish web app to facilitate dissemination of useful information about seafood and aquaculture consumption choices by reproducing the VeriFish Indicator Framework in an easy-to- navigate format.
Furthermore, online factsheets will be made available on the desktop version of the web application as an extension to the GRSF semantic KB that already hosts Stocks and Fisheries records of all major EU data providers.
