Introducing Trace Element Fingerprinting

ASC has unveiled a new technology that allows us to verify ASC-certified seafood back to its farm of origin with better than 95% accuracy. It’s a new way to seafood.

Our pioneering technology – based on Trace Element Fingerprinting (TEF) – will, in part, help to further reduce seafood fraud and mislabeling, occurrences all too common in both wild-caught and farmed seafood.

“In order to make claims about being the ‘best’ or ‘sustainable,’ you must be able to verify where and how the seafood was raised,” said Peter Redmond, ASC’s senior market development manager, North America. “We are encouraged by the opportunity this technology brings to further strengthen our certification program.”

ASC is the world’s leading provider of farmed seafood certification. Since 2010, we have been creating and enforcing the world’s strictest combination of standards for

• Improving farmed seafood quality and safety.
• Ensuring supply chain integrity from the farm to the store.
• Providing the most comprehensive transparency through public disclosure.
• Protecting the environment, workers and communities.

ASC is the only aquaculture certification program that can verify your seafood is what it claims to be, where it came from, how it was responsibly raised and how it got to you.

Now, with TEF, ASC has the ability to trace farmed seafood with even more accuracy. Tests have already been conducted at several ASC-certified shrimp farms in Southeast Asia and is now in progress in other regions. In these, we and our partners were able to correctly identify the farms of origin in all samples and achieved better than 95% accuracy compared to lower accuracy rates for conventional statistical methodologies.

“ASC’s use of TEF technology reflects the concept that ‘you are what you eat,’” Redmond added. “The environment in which you eat, drink and live leaves a footprint in your body, and the same is true of farmed seafood. Trace elements from the local soils, groundwater, surrounding environment and food are taken in by plants and animals and, with our use of TEF technology, we can link them back to their place of origin.”

We will continue to test and refine the technology, which will be included in ASC’s new Chain of Custody (CoC) requirements.

Strengthening the ASC Label

Consumers can find our sea green ASC-certified responsible seafood label at grocers and seafood counters nationwide. Internationally, the ASC label is on more than 19,400 products.

“While our label is a symbol to consumers that their product comes from a certified responsible farm, we also need to constantly adapt to new technologies,” said Wendy Banta, ASC’s senior program assurance manager. “Now, with TEF technology, we are further pushing mislabeling and fraud out of this industry and driving what we call, ‘the new way to seafood.’”