East Coast Shellfish Growers Association June 2024 Newsletter

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Seafood Traceability Summit Takeaways by Robert Rheault, ECSGA Executive Director I spent the day on May 3 remotely attending the Seafood Traceability Summit sponsored by Virginia Tech so you didn’t have to. Following are some notes I took on the trends, innovations and challenges that lie ahead. Molluscan shellfish regulated under the National Shellfish Sanitation Program (NSSP) are currently exempted from the traceability requirements of the Food Safety Modernization Act 1 (FSMA), but you may soon find your buyers demanding that you adopt all the tagging requirements of the rule if you want to sell to them. So from a practical standpoint, you should talk to your buyers now to see what they will want from you. Samuels Seafood Company Joe Lasprogata, Vice President of Samuels Seafood Company, kicked off the summit using his company as a case study in why traceabilty software systems are needed in our industry. Although the main facility is headquartered in Philadelphia, Samuels also has satellite locations in Miami and Las Vegas. They have over 500 employees and put 100 trucks on the road every day. Samuels offers 5,000 products, and 250 of them are perishable, fresh fish and shellfish. Most of their products are farmed, and they cut fish to order for each customer. Roughly 40 fish cutters are on the job every day, and a customer might be receiving fish from several different batches on any given day. Every night they unload products from about 20 trucks dropping off seafood from all over the country; the daily receiving log is several pages long. In 2017 Samuels sold 27 million oysters, and they usually have 30-50 varieties of oysters in the shellfish cooler. As you can imagine, Joe has had to deal with plenty of recalls in his time. Before Samuels began using traceability software, the recalls were a total nightmare, but all that has changed. For example, a few months ago Joe was notified that a 500-pound load of mussels that he had purchased two weeks prior had been recalled, and every customer had to be notified. He had purchased 2,000 pounds of mussels from three different vendors that day, and they had been sent out to well over 100 different customers. Before the traceability software, manually figuring out who got which mussels might have taken him all day. But because he now uses BlueTrace tagging and inventory software, it took him about 10 minutes to identify and notify the 50 or so customers who had purchased mussels from that specific lot. Joe talked about many of the reasons he needs sophisticated traceability and inventory-management software to maintain his sanity. Bar code or QR code scanners greatly facilitate the creation of receiving and shipping logs. This significantly reduces data-entry labor costs and eliminates concerns about illegible handwriting or language barriers at the receiving dock. The software also helps with inventory management, ensuring that the first product in is the first product sold. Since all perishable products lose value over time, anything dealers can do to speed delivery is a money saver. Facilitating product recalls is an obvious benefit, but Joe also appreciates the potential to reduce the scope (breadth) of recalls. Traceback speed and accuracy should get better in the future, which could reduce illnesses as well as eliminate the cases where a product is falsely implicated in an illness. FDA CORE Network Adam Friedlander is a policy analyst in the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) Office of Coordinated Outbreak Response and Evaluation (CORE) Network who interacts with a variety of stakeholders on the requirements of the FDA Food Traceability Rule. Adam described how Rule 204 of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) is being implemented. The FDA has designated a Food Traceability List 2 of dairy, fruit, vegetable and seafood products considered “high-risk foods,” and anyone distributing foods on this list will be required to implement new traceability procedures starting in January 2026, although they probably won’t become elements of routine inspections until 2027. Even though molluscan shellfish are currently exempt from the traceability requirements, Adam expects that most customers will demand that shellfish producers and dealers adopt the requirements well before then. He suggested that anyone with questions could check the 179-page —Continued on page 13 ECSGA Newsletter Page 10 Issue 2 June 2024
Samuel W. (Billy) Plauché billy@plauchecarr.com Megan Terrell megan@plauchecarr.com plauchecarr.com Advocates and Counselors Representing Shellfish Growers Since 1999 Gulf Coast Office 225.256.4028 Pacific Northwest Office 206.588.4188 —Continued from page 9 Ketcham, Saeplast, Aqua Production Systems industry’s pain points: filtration.” Wayne explained that they start by “designing a filtration system with media equipped to do the job, reducing the need for media changes to…only once every five to seven years. Daily maintenance is automated, with backwash cycles performed at the intervals necessary to maintain water cleanliness.” Each installed system also automatically transmits information on equipment operation and water quality back to the company. Wayne explained that APS joined the ECSGA as an equipment supplier because the company’s work promoting industry best practices and sharing knowledge is in keeping with the mission of the ECSGA. They plan to continue growing their business “with a strong focus on technology and innovation,” while facing the challenges of gaining access to all the markets that could benefit from their products and expertise. Wayne added that the best part of his job is “watching our customers thrive with us. The worst part is watching potential customers struggle with dead loss when there is no need for it.” Hyperlinks 1. ketchamsupply. com/2024/04/30/new-productlaunch-seaplast-recirculatingboxes-for-wet-storage-and-depuration 2. ecsga.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/ECSGA_NL_v2- 21.pdf#page=14 Prop 65 Could Bankrupt You! If you ship product to California and don't label it with a Proposition 65 warning, you could be ruined by predatory lawyers. They have sued several firms over regulations that set very low tolerances for hundreds of chemicals and metals present in products sold in the state. Oysters could easily exceed allowable lead and cadmium levels. For more details visit: ecsga.org/wp-content/ uploads/2021/07/ECSGA_ NL_v3-21.pdf#page=8 ECSGA Newsletter Issue 2 June 2024 Page 11
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East Coast Shellfish Growers Association June 2024 Newsletter

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