In 2020, an important undertaking by SeaBOS will be to complete a rapid assessment of how the new ‘GDST Standards and Guidelines for Interoperable Seafood Traceability Systems, Version 1.0’, developed by the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability (GDST) to track seafood products from point of origin to point of sale, can be applied to each member’s business.
GDST was established in 2017 as a seafood industry forum dedicated to drafting the first-ever global standards for seafood traceability. The GDST 1.0 standards were launched in March 2020 after three years of consensus-based work.
With the estimation that illegal fishing accounts for as much as a quarter of all fish caught globally, which in turn fuels overfishing, environmental degradation and human rights abuses, it is essential that seafood supply chains demonstrate where products come from and how they were sourced.