THE PROJECT

Environmental and food safety policies in the European Union, such as the Green Deal, Bioeconomy, Circular Economy, Farm 2 Fork Strategy and more, aim to ensure more sustainable, inclusive, safe and healthy seafood production and consumption in Europe. A number of challenges continues to impede the achievement of the desired level of transparency and traceability of seafood products since the European seafood markets can still be characterized by a high level of unsustainable fishing and farming practices.

OVERVIEW

Current seafood traceability tools and services have the potential to take advantage of novel blockchain technologies to obtain a wide range of data making sustainable seafood practices more visible to consumers. Sea2See project fills in existing seafood traceability gaps through the development of an innovative end-to-end blockchain model, and both professional and consumer applications to increase trust and social acceptance of sustainably fished and farmed seafood. The project will provide technological solutions to answer the need for a valuable source of data collected throughout the whole seafood value chain, verified and covering inputs from diverse groups of stakeholders.

OBJECTIVES

SEA2SEE holds significant potential to increase the consumption of sustainably fished or farmed seafood among European consumers by engaging them in providing trustworthy traceability information through participatory demonstrations of the use of web-based and digital tools.

IMPACT

Recent research shows that the promotion of sustainability in seafood bears potential for product differentiation and therefore higher premiums and market shares. Recent publications analyzing consumer preferences and their willingness to pay (WTP) reveal that there is a very small consumer segment with a high WTP and a larger segment with a medium WTP for fish produced in compliance with sustainable production methods and from European origin.