Outlaw Ocean Project Report Exposes a Major Global Seafood Problem

Do we really know what is behind the fish we eat?

That question is at the heart of the new Outlaw Ocean Project report, Food for Feed, which is washing over the global seafood industry. The Outlaw Ocean Project’s investigation examines disturbing allegations of labor and environmental abuses within global seafood supply chains, particularly those involving fishmeal production and aquaculture.

While the investigation focuses on these specific allegations, it also brings attention to a broader challenge facing the seafood industry: the difficulty of collecting, connecting, and verifying information across complex global supply chains. 

Blake Harris, Managing Director of IFT’s Global Food Traceability Center, shares his six key takeaways from the Outlaw Ocean Project report: 

1. Supply-chain visibility and accountability: The investigation highlights longstanding challenges in our ability to identify where products originate, how they move through supply chains, and where risks exist.
2. End-to-end traceability: Traceability must extend across the entire supply chain, including ingredients and inputs such as fishmeal and fish oil used in aquaculture feed.
3. Digital interoperability: Common data standards and interoperable systems are essential to connecting fragmented supply-chain information and making it actionable.
4. Traceability is necessary but not sufficient: Traceability enables transparency and accountability, but must be complemented by verification, due diligence, and enforcement.
5. Coordinated action and investment: Addressing systemic supply-chain challenges requires alignment among industry, governments, standards organizations, and technology providers, supported by shared digital infrastructure.
6. Data challenges across the food system: The challenges of collecting, exchanging, and verifying supply-chain data are not unique to seafood. They exist across food commodities, reinforcing the need for interoperable, commodity-agnostic traceability infrastructure.

Blake Harris previously shared how coordinated traceability could make seafood safer, more sustainable, and better regulated worldwide in this Brain Food Blog.

IFT’s Global Food Traceability Center (GFTC) is an internationally recognized leader in food traceability, dedicated to advancing end-to-end tracking and data sharing throughout the global food supply chain. GFTC develops open-source, scalable tools and resources that drive digital transformation at scale and enable comprehensive traceability for all actors in the food system – from producers and first-mile actors to processors, distributors, retailers, and regulators. GFTC collaborates with a diverse network of global partners – including industry, governments, NGOs, multilateral organizations, and technology providers – to advance best practices and accelerate the adoption of interoperable, digital traceability solutions. GFTC jointly led the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability (GDST) with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) from 2017 to 2022, helping develop the first global standard for interoperable seafood traceability.

Since GDST became an independent nonprofit in 2022, Following GDST’s transition to an independent nonprofit in 2022, GFTC has continued to support GDST’s work as a technical collaborator, contributing to the ongoing development, testing, implementation, and evolution of the GDST Standards and associated tools and resources. This work now helps inform efforts to advance interoperable traceability across other food commodities.