A Tide To Table Traceability and Marketing System for Shellfish Aquaculture.

In 2017 the CDC estimated 35,000 American got sick from Vibrio parahaemolyticus transmitted by shellfish--a 54% increase. However, according to the co-chair of the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Commission, “Our current system of traceback is inadequate.... Records are lost. Handwriting is illegible. More than half of all traceback investigations fail because the information in the value chain is lost.” Improvements in technology give us a unique opportunity to improve food safety. Shellfish Solutions will leverage existing smart phones, QR codes, mobile thermal printers and cloud computing to build an inexpensive traceability system that will be lower cost to the existing handwritten tag system and significantly more powerful. We will improve shellfish safety while reducing the paperwork burden on farms. To encourage adoption, farms will have the opportunity to market their product directly to dealers, chefs and consumers. Shellfish Solutions will embed videos, web pages and social media feeds into the QR code so anyone can learn more about the farm with their smartphone.