SEAFOOD-AGE tackles a common social and economic challenge in the Atlantic Area: an ageing population. Healthy ageing requires a healthy diet, and seafood products provide essential nutrients not always accessible to older adults. The project will exploit the maritime dimension of the Atlantic Area regions and will adopt circular economy concepts to generate ready-to-eat seafood for healthy ageing, produce novel eco-packaging and develop a smart label for better quality, safety and minimum food waste.

INDIGO will be involved in the sustainable production of algal ingredients for ready-to-eat seafood, particularly process and product optimization for maximum quality, and develop competencies for innovation. We will mostly be involved in WP4 where we will determine the effect of the deployment time and harvesting time of near-shore long-line cultivation of the seaweed Alaria esculenta on compounds such as phlorotannins, fucoxanthin and other yet-to-be-determined bioactives, and their effect on in vitro antimicrobial and antioxidant activity. We will optimise processes to ensure the highest quality product with high levels of active compounds and as part of WP5, contribute to co-design and marketability of the bioactive compounds identified and the potential of the seaweed final product as an ingredient in ready-to-eat seafood for the elderly.

Seafood fraud has been recognised by EFSA in 2015 as an emergent risk. SEA-TRACES will help prevent fraud by:

• Developing new and standardised authentication techniques (i.e. species, geographic origin, fresh/thawed, etc)
• Creating a VIRTUAL REFERENCE CENTER for managing seafood reference tissues, specific DNA sequences and SOPs (LABELFISH and newly developed)
• Determining the requirements of consumers and involving them in the process of seafood traceability & labelling
• Demonstrating the benefits of seafood traceability & labelling.

The brief summary now clearly shows the main outputs that SEA-TRACES intends to deliver during implementation, and although the objectives were maintained, they are now displayed sequentially and in a more focused way.

The general objective of SEA-TRACES is to demonstrate to stakeholders and consumers that Labelling, and Traceability are essential to protect and valorize Atlantic Area’s fisheries and aquaculture. Illegal fisheries, fraud and mislabelling are the main issues representing a serious risk to the existence of this important economic activity for the Atlantic Area Regions. The main actors, producers, industry, markets and consumers should be aware of the threat and the available tools which will empower them to adopt a responsible attitude towards the production, marketing and buying of seafood. SEA-TRACES will demonstrate, through case studies in different regions, how innovative implementation of traceability and labelling instruments will facilitate and increase the marketing and revenues, thus acting as a driving force to inspire other companies to adopt similar strategies. Consumers and industry are meant to find agreements about how product information has to be delivered and obtained in order to maximize the information flow, SEA-TRACES will foster these encounters and workshops. Appropriate analytical tools are essential for the compliance with latest labelling regulations; SEA-TRACES will develop, test and implement new tools for the verification of Labels. Administration, Control and Research Labs are the main actors involved in label analysis and control, involvement of these actors in newly virtual platform will allow SEA-TRACES test the feasibility of transferring results.