Ensuring seafood quality and safety as well as guaranteeing product authenticity throughout the chain is the aim of the guide prepared by AZTI-Tecnalia. This tool enables the reliability of the information that seafood suppliers offer the agri-foodstuff industries to be evaluated scientifically. This guide is also extremely useful for organisations that oversee the accuracy of the information traced along the value chain.

A major problem facing the food industry is being able to reliably identify the animal or plant species used in the preparation of a product. That has prompted Azti-Tecnalia's Food Research Unit to embark on a piece of research that has culminated in the "Practical Guide for Validating Traceability in Seafood Products" (Guía Práctica para la Validación de la Trazabilidad en Productos Pesqueros), which comes within the framework of the SEAFOODplus European project.

This piece of work provides information, and selects and sets out the main analytical techniques (validation tools) which make it possible to establish two things: the accuracy of the information available, and the effectiveness of the steps put unto practice to guarantee the food safety, quality, and authenticity of the products being marketed as well as the correct information flow throughout the seafood chain.

The guide is available on the Internet at www.azti.es/valid, and constitutes a key document not only for anyone involved in the production and marketing chain, but also for monitoring agencies. It offers the keys needed to validate the traceability of seafood products, in other words, to know the exact data relating to these goods throughout the path taken.

The development and application of methodologies involving DNA-based molecular analysis to identify marine species is one of the areas that AZTI-Tecnalia has concentrated its work on. Traditional techniques based on protein analysis are very limited for identification purposes, and that is why DNA-based methodologies offer the best alternative. DNA analysis enables the marine species in question to be specified and even its geographical origin in some cases. But it is also useful for quantifying the ingredients used in food mixtures. The quality of seafood products can be ensured thanks to these methodologies.

To ensure that these methodologies are used correctly, AZTI-Tecnalia has developed a series of validation tools called plasmidic standards. These standards enable the characteristics and composition of different species to be compared. This means that they are an excellent reference material for the DNA authentication tasks conducted by specialised laboratories and by organisations that oversee the reliability of the information traced.

The technology centre has applied for a patent for these standards for the authentication of seafood products. At the same time, AZTI-Tecnalia has developed a dynamic database comprising over 700 DNA sequences from 53 fish species, including the ones commercially more important for the European market, like tuna, hake or cod.

SEAFOODplus Project

SEAFOODplus is, so far, the biggest European project conducted in connection with seafood products and has about seventy centres belonging to sixteen European countries. This initiative seeks to satisfy consumer needs and demands by encouraging greater consumption of health-giving, safe and innovative seafood products.

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