Investigating the use of trace element profiles to substantiate provenance for the Australian prawn industry

Funded Activity Summary

Industry stakeholders from ACPF and APFA have identified the potential for the "Love Australian Prawns" campaign to be undermined by the practice of unscrupulous operators substituting Australian prawns with lower value product. Therefore it has been proposed that, to support the national marketing strategy, a rapid and robust scientific method must be developed to verify compliance and, ensure product integrity, including food safety, truth in labelling and traceability. The trace metal authentication methods used by other primary production industries represents a possible opportunity to prove provenance. Should the technology prove suitable, a detailed and effective communication strategy (aligned with the LAP distribution channels) is considered mandatory to ensure whole of chain knowledge of the capability and aligned consequences for substitution offenders. This project is broken into two parts;
1) Proof of Concept: To establish enforcement agency and supply chain usage of the tool, to call for tenders against a defined brief
2) Database construction and extension: If project investors agree that the proof of concept will meet the need (ie a project STOP/GO point), the technology will be utilised with the plan to implement it as a provenance tool.



Objectives:
1. To investigate and pilot a cost effective, legally enforceable method to establish the provenance of prawns and ensure robust identification of source harvest areas for the Australian prawn industry.
2. Investigate and confirm with stakeholders how the method can be used as a basis for preventing/discouraging the substitution currently impacting the LAP national strategy and otheraccreditation/branding initiatives (eg MSC).
3. To communicate the outcomes of the project results to supply chain partners and regulators and evaluate such that is can be shown that they aware that such a method exists and how it can be used to manage product integrity issues.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-03-2017

End Date: 15-05-2019

Funding Scheme: Funding Scheme not available

Funding Amount: $248,043.12

Funder: Fisheries Research and Development Corporation

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

There are no FoR codes available for this funding activity

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

There are no SEO codes available for this funding activity

Other Keywords

Communications | E-commerce & market platforms | GIS | Media | Resource Access And Allocation | Supply Chain | Traceability

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