Global Dialogue
Global Dialogue
From August 2018 until March 2020, the GFTC produced several outputs to advance seafood traceability in addition to the standards and supporting documents themselves.
The GFTC has taken an innovative approach towards documentation of the normative standards and developer support. Understanding that to achieve end-to-end traceability requires digital nativity, GFTC has developed both normative and recommended approaches to GDST compliance crafted in such a way to ease implementation among relevant disciplines especially IT, supply chain management, quality, and corporate sustainability and responsibility.
The GDST standard has been written to leverage global standards of identity and conveyance of logistics data, namely Electronic Product Code Information Services (EPCIS) XML. The GDST extends this existing standard for sustainability use cases in on-vessel and on-farm events. The standard has two components: written normative standards detailing the core requirements for data collection and file formatting and the GitHub, a space for developers to reference open source code and technical details for implementation.
The GFTC conducted end-to-end traceability pilots as a way of evaluating and interrogating real-world seafood supply chains for identification, data collection, and sharing relationship requirements. After assessing the technological landscape through surveys and structured interviews, we modified our methodology used in the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act pilots with a focus on leveraging existing standards, interoperability and technology adoption.
The pilot methodology utilizes a Key Data Element / Critical Tracking Event matrix to structure relevant data needing to be collected at certain supply chain processes to achieve end-to-end traceability, especially pertaining to Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing. Using the Basic Universal List of KDEs developed by GDST seafood member input, GFTC maps supply chains of pilot participant companies, with a view to a diversity of geographic locations, commodities, company size, and technology adoption.
Pilot Methodology Steps:
Case Studies Available for Download
The following traceability pilot case studies are available for download in PDF format. For questions on pilots, reach out to [email protected].
The GFTC has been crucial to the GDST process by convening technical experts from various disciplines. To ensure that the standards meet the needs of these skill sets (described in the documentation section), GFTC led technical workshops and “hackathons” to develop solutions to challenges raised by seafood companies. Hackathons are competitions wherein teams of developers sprint to create innovative proof of concepts to resolve questions put forward by seafood industry experts.
Implementation Exercise
Hackathons
Webcasts