The Australian prawn industry welcomes the launch of a new prawn traceability program by Assistant Minister for Forestry and Fisheries, Jonathon Duniam on today.
The program is a world first in the seafood industry – a whole of industry provenance program that verifies provenance to a forensic standard to protect the provenance, integrity and labelling claims of Australian Prawns.
The Australian prawn industry is leading the way with the potential for new provenance technology to build confidence amongst consumers who want to “know where their prawns come from” by confirming the geographical origins of Australian wild harvest and farmed prawn products.
Prawn samples covering Australia’s major wild catch fisheries and aquaculture prawn farms have been analysed by Source Certain International (SCI) for their identifying trace element profiles or environmental fingerprint.
Matt West, Australian Prawn Farmers Association (APFA) President, says the Australian prawn aquaculture sector is very excited about the potential for the project.
“Results indicate that this technology will be an important tool in demonstrating provenance of Australian prawns,” Mr West said.
“This technology will be a ‘win win’ for the prawn industry and consumers; as it will give the public certainty that if it says ‘Australian prawns’, then they are getting Australian prawns.”
The project also supports the industry’s investment in the “Love Australian Prawns” marketing campaign, which is aimed at encouraging consumers to buy Australian prawns.
Annie Jarrett, Australian Council of Prawn Fisheries (ACPF) Chair, says that robust traceability and provenance systems are areas of increasing importance to Australian consumers.
“Our industry wants to be able to scientifically verify the provenance of Australian prawns at any point in the supply chain globally,” Ms Jarrett said.
Cameron Scadding, Managing Director of SCI, agrees that consumers care where their food is from, and also where and how it has been processed.
“There is absolute value in the Australian brand and we are excited to work with the Australian prawn industry as they take the lead to build integrity in this promise and drive transparency into the entire prawn supply chain,” Mr Scadding said.
The project database and profiling technology has the potential to be utilised through the supply chain to validate labelling claims. In market testing is already underway. This initial in market work is focused on Love Australia Prawn branded products. Consumers could, for the first time, have confidence that independent of the supply chain the Australian claim on these products is being checked and can be checked at any time.
The project has been jointly funded by the ACPF, the APFA and the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC) through the School of Molecular and Life Sciences at Curtin University.
