Maintaining and enhancing market access for Australian seafood is critical for future industry growth. SafeFish makes a significant contribution to this by carrying out three types of projects:
1. Food safety incident responses. The SafeFish partners come together during each incident to provide industry and government with immediate technical information required to respond to the incident. Subsequently, technical input is provided to update policies for prevention of similar incidents and respond to them should they recur. Appropriate technical responses reduce the impact of food safety incidents and ensure better outcomes for future management.
2. Technical input to inter-government consultations on food regulations and market access. It is essential for the Australian seafood industry to participate in consultations such as Codex to ensure that proposed new, or modified, regulations are pragmatic and cost-effective for the Australian seafood industry. It is far easier to influence standards under development than after they have been finalised. Similarly, it is essential for the seafood industry to stay in close contact with Food Safety Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) when domestic food safety regulations are reviewed.
3. Proactive research, risk analyses and training. The safety of Australian seafood is not negotiable in domestic and international markets. Over recent years SafeFish has conducted many activities to assist the industry anticipate and minimize food safety risks. The objective of the activities has always been to identify and mitigate risks before they cause a problem, or to grow knowledge to enable us to improve our risk management in a cost effective manner.

Despite considerable investment in RD&E to understand why the Australian seafood industry has been experiencing diminished levels of socio-political and community acceptability, there is still uncertainty regarding the significant values of different segments of the Australian community for coastal and marine systems, their management and industry (Essence Communications 2015). Further, there is evidence these values and associated expectations are highly changeable and can have significant individual, business and national repercussions. While the seafood industry already operates from a strong values-based position of its own - ‘sustainability’, there is evidence the community's concerns have expanded to include animal welfare, supply chain integrity, modern slavery for example.

Understanding community values and expectations is important but not enough. Industry must articulate and demonstrate its commitments to addressing kncommunity expectations. This is critical to breaking the reactive negative cycle that threatens resource access, mental health and viability of our industry. A means of monitoring and tracking industry's success in responding to the community's changing expectations and values must also be developed.

Seafood Industry Australia's (SIA) members have identified social licence. This project is a tangible commitment to a national conversation and action to address community values. It is an opportunity to build seafood industry unity on the basis of a set of shared values and supporting practices.

Australian Council of Prawn Fisheries (ACPF) has initiated a lot of this listening and values-related work relevant to wild catch prawns. ACPF is ready to design, implement and evaluate activities that embed these values as messages and convey the supporting or changing behaviours as proof. ACPF needs to ensure that its outputs reflect the direction of the Australia seafood industry and sees advantages in liaising with SIA as it produces outputs at sector level. In doing so, it will provide a test case for how other seafood industry sectors can undertake to acknowledge and respond to community values and expectations, and make a national set of shared industry-community values their own.

The Australian Seafood Industry operates in a diverse and dynamic environment and although the volume produced in Australia is small by world standards, the value and quality of our product and sustainability of our practices are globally recognised. For the Seafood Industry to continue to be a world leader in seafood production and quality there must be an opportunity to learn from each other and plan for the future. We must also use the event as an opportunity to generate media interest and recognition for the broader seafood industry.

The role of Seafood Directions is to provide a significant opportunity for fishers, managers, researchers, industry representatives and others who work in support of the industry, to examine key contemporary and strategic issues and develop blueprints that will ensure a sustainable, profitable and socially resilient seafood industry in Australia.

The need for Seafood Directions is indicated by the ongoing support of key stakeholders of the seafood industry, as is evident by the level of industry sponsorship and attendance at the conference. We know Australians love seafood, and therefore using the conference to 'showcase' the amazing people and products of the seafood industry will be an important addition to the 2019 conference.