The shellfish industry has some of the strictest harvest and traceability requirements of any food category. And in a context of changing environmental and market conditions, this burden on businesses and agencies will only increase. How do we continue to safeguard public health while furnishing time for operators and regulators alike to do their jobs?
This is the time and place for technology in shellfish. By adapting everyday innovations like mobile devices and QR codes to the shellfish industry, we help businesses accomplish some of their most cumbersome and important — but least glamorous and enjoyable — tasks.
We’ve built two mobile apps: one for harvesters and one for dealers. Users create a digital harvest or receiving record, complete with all required datapoints (time, temp, location, cert #, etc.). Users can then seamlessly generate tags, logs, and shipping labels with no additional data entry, all automatically formatted to comply with their authority’s specific requirements. Save time, reduce errors, and get back to farming shellfish rather than paper.
Our program continues to evolve with industry and agency input. In 2022, we added an automated recall feature to enable more efficient tracking and communication throughout the supply chain. We envision a future in which there is a digital record of every lot of shellfish harvested and distributed in this country. This would let operators focus on their business, give regulators better tools to track product and enforce rules, and improve consumer safety and confidence in shellfish. It may seem like a moonshot, but the technology exists, and with over 300 clients to date, we’re well on our way!