Expanding seafood traceability requires stronger foundations
After 16 years working in seafood sustainability, I left last week’s Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions conference with a question that keeps coming back: how much more can we ask supply chains to report before we invest enough in their ability to deliver?
The Alliance created space for important conversations, including one I participated in about a multi-stakeholder approach to social traceability. Participants were asked to provide feedback on a lengthy list of proposed key data elements, or KDEs, through a prioritization worksheet. My understanding from the session was that this work was being explored as an expansion of the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability, or GDST.
The ambition matters. Better visibility into human rights risks is needed. But looking at the worksheet, I was also thinking about the people who would have to collect, verify, maintain, and exchange that information.
The work behind each additional data field
For companies already preparing for FSMA food traceability requirements, onboarding vendors, and introducing GDST data exchange, the implementation work is substantial. It involves training suppliers, mapping information, adapting systems, resolving gaps, and coordinating across businesses with very different resources.
Adding social traceability data could support more comprehensive human rights due diligence. But every additional field needs a purpose, an owner, a reliable source, and a clear connection to action.
The worksheet made the implementation challenge tangible. Proposed fields included worker names, age verification potentially involving birthdates, monthly free data allowances for fishers, and grievance counts and remediation timelines. Each deserves a discussion about purpose, proportionality, confidentiality, and verification. Which information needs to accompany the product, and which should remain securely at source, supported by credible verification? How will buyers interpret a low grievance count when it could reflect either effective prevention or workers’ reluctance to report? These are precisely the questions a prioritization exercise should resolve before proposed fields become procurement expectations. Producers and workers need a meaningful role in answering them.
What decision will this information change? Can it be collected safely and accurately? Who will pay for the work? What happens when a risk is identified?
Traceability can support due diligence, but collecting information does not, by itself, prevent harm or provide remedy. We need capacity to act on what the data reveals.
At the conference, I also heard about GDST’s Animal Welfare Expansion Framework. A September announcement reports an expected launch in Q1 2027, with the framework under GDST Technical Council review and supply chain partners being invited to trial it. This was the first I had heard it was being launched next year.
That raised another question for me: how do we ensure that expanding expectations are communicated early enough for the businesses expected to implement them?
Reaching beyond retailer requirements
In my work, much of the pressure for increasingly detailed sustainability information comes through retailer requirements, often informed by NGO partners. Those partnerships can help advance practice. But we need to consider how that progress reaches the wider market.
If our approach depends heavily on retailer procurement expectations, how will we engage foodservice, hospitality, and producers whose customers do not request the same information?
We cannot assume that adding requirements for participating buyers will translate into broad adoption across the industry.
Producers should have access to practical tools, support, and opportunities to improve regardless of whether they supply a particular retailer. Otherwise, we risk reinforcing a “pay to play” dynamic in which participation depends on the ability to absorb growing implementation costs.
Producer participation needs to shape the requirements
The animal welfare trial invitation includes fisheries, aquaculture, processors, retailers, foodservice, certification bodies, and traceability providers. That breadth is encouraging. The next test is whether participation meaningfully shapes the expectations, costs, and timelines.
Producers need a voice while requirements are being designed, prioritized, and tested.
In my work, I see suppliers navigating overlapping social audits, environmental expectations, customer questionnaires, and reporting requests. Buyers may seek similar information through different formats, platforms, and verification processes.
With limited resources, suppliers can become overextended trying to satisfy each customer’s checklist. Meanwhile, the people closest to production may have little room to explain where requests duplicate existing work or where commercial conditions undermine the improvements buyers are seeking.
Short lead times, pricing pressure, and unpredictable orders deserve examination alongside supplier practices. If we expect producers to invest in better working conditions and stronger systems, our purchasing practices need to support that investment.
Workers and their representatives also need a meaningful voice. A more complete dataset cannot substitute for listening to the people whose rights we aim to protect.
Why regulation and enforcement matter
After 16 years in this space, I am increasingly convinced that well-designed regulation, supported by consistent enforcement, offers a stronger route to broad accountability.
When requirements become a condition of market access, their reach can extend beyond the suppliers serving buyers with voluntary commitments. That creates an opportunity for a more consistent baseline across sales channels.
Regulation still requires practical guidance, implementation support, and effective enforcement. Voluntary initiatives can help test approaches and advance practice. But we should be clear about how those efforts will contribute to wider change, rather than continually increasing complexity for the same participating supply chains.
Build the foundation as we expand
Before expanding reporting expectations, I would like to see greater investment in a few essentials:
- Align buyer requests and reuse information suppliers already collect.
- Prioritize data according to risk and the decisions it will inform.
- Test collection and exchange in real supply chains, including those with limited resources.
- Share implementation costs and provide training, tools, and realistic timelines.
- Connect reporting to prevention, corrective action, worker protection, and remedy.
For companies supplying retailers or implementing GDST, now is the time to engage in these discussions. Ask which proposed fields may affect your operations, what remains under development, and how your implementation experience can influence the outcome. An expected framework launch should not be confused with a universal reporting obligation.
My concern is that we keep adding expectations faster than we build the foundation to support them.
Human rights and animal welfare deserve serious attention. That includes serious attention to accessibility, producer participation, buyer accountability, and implementation.
Without that investment, we risk building a house of cards: increasingly elaborate on paper, but too fragile to deliver the change we need.