30 results

Our Pledge: Australian seafood industry response to community values and expectations

Project number: 2017-242
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $153,484.97
Principal Investigator: Jane D. Lovell
Organisation: Seafood Industry Australia (SIA)
Project start/end date: 14 Aug 2018 - 30 Jul 2019
Contact:
FRDC

Need

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.

Objectives

1. Identify values of major segments of the Australian community for fisheries resources and seafood industries, and expectations of industry behaviours that support those values
2. Identify values of the Australian seafood industry that are common across the industry at national and sector/regional scales
3. Establish industry response to community values and expectations, including measurable benchmarks of industry behaviours and performance that demonstrate commitment
4. Demonstrate and evaluate the effectiveness of a community engagement and communication strategy that is built on recognised shared values and committment to supporting industry behaviours (Extension proof of concept – Prawns)
5. Increase capacity of industry's current and emerging leaders to engage in values-and-behaviours conversations with community leaders on an ongoing basis

Report

Author: Futureye
Report • 2020-09-07 • 1.02 MB
2017-242_Review of Community Attitudes.pdf

Summary

Seafood Industry Australia commissioned Futureye to review existing research into the Australian communities attitudes toward seafood, as well as other market research, that has been undertaken since 2014. The findings from this review were used to make recommendations to Seafood Industry Australia about what to address in their pledge to demonstrate the industry’s intent to earn its ‘social licence to operate.’

Project products

Report • 2020-09-07 • 354.06 KB
2017-242_The Pledge - Industry Values & Practices.pdf

Summary

Seafood Industry Australia commissioned Sea Change Consulting Australia to review values statements and recorded practices of 52 Australian seafood organisations. This review collated the most common Australian industry values and underpinning behaviours (practices), which provides evidence to demonstrate the industry’s effort and performance regarding to meet shared practices and values to earn its social licence to operate.

Report • 2020-09-07 • 1.12 MB
2017-242_Community Sentiment Research.pdf

Summary

Essence was engaged by Seafood Industry Australia to undertake a research program to help inform the development of a pledge to the Australian community and provide a benchmark of community sentiment towards the Australian seafood industry.

Final Report • 2020-09-15 • 3.70 MB
2017-242-DLD.pdf

Summary

The Australian seafood industry has clearly identified social licence and community perceptions as critical issues for its ongoing viability and prosperity. This is because current research shows substantial proportions of the Australian public are concerned or knows little about the ethics, environmental impact and governance of the seafood industry. To help improve industry’s social licence, this project aimed to develop a clearer understanding of community and industry values and underpinning behaviours to identify both threats to social license and behaviours community would like to see reinforced by industry.

Industry
Industry
PROJECT NUMBER • 2019-060
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

The Detection of Ciguatera Toxins in NSW Spanish Mackerel

Ciguatera Poisoning (CP) is an illness through the consumption of fish containing naturally occurring toxins, and is considered a high risk for Australian seafood safety. Ciguatoxins (CTXs) are produced by benthic microalgae (Gambierdiscus spp). In Australia, CP cases are related to fish caught in...
ORGANISATION:
University of Technology Sydney (UTS)

Pilot - Development of Seafood Nutritional Panels

Project number: 2017-145
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $149,480.00
Principal Investigator: Andrew J. Forrest
Organisation: Department of Primary Industries (QLD)
Project start/end date: 23 Jan 2018 - 30 Mar 2019
Contact:
FRDC

Need

There is a need for common baseline of information that provides easy accessible compositional profiles in suitable formats about their products to enable them to meet their individual needs.

The information needs to be robust, consistent and cover the minimum needs of a nutritional panel (consumer) and contaminant information.

The project will assist in meeting industry needs for:
- Promoting the public health benefits of seafood consumption more generally.
- Rapid access to credible information to counter negative media claims.
- Assist in addressing current and future technical market challenges.
- Anticipate and quickly respond to market access threats.

Additionally there is a need to ensure that nutritional information on the key species (those covered in the Status of Australian Fish Stocks Reports) and profiled on the FRDC consumer site Fishfiles is available.

It is important to note that FRDC funded two studies that undertook oil analysis for 250+ Australian species. See the Seafood the Good Food volume 1 and 2 for the results. This means the need is on broadening this analysis to include other nutritional elements.

Objectives

1. Create nutrition panels for a minimum of 25 seafood species where none exist.

Final report

ISBN: 978-0-7345-0462-3
Authors: Carl Paulo Andrew Forrest Paul Exley and Sue Poole
Final Report • 2019-12-16 • 891.90 KB
2017-145-DLD.pdf

Summary

Understanding the nutritional composition of seafood products is both a regulatory requirement and a consumer demand. Although a considerable body of data exists that covers key fish species, the majority of commercially important species within the wild catch sector still lack a basic nutritional profile. This knowledge gap impacts heavily on industry by providing hurdles for operators to meet their regulatory responsibilities and leaving consumers somewhat in the dark when it comes to understanding the seafood products they consume. To address this, extensive work was undertaken to develop nutrition panels for a minimum of 25 commercially important wild catch seafood species where none currently exist.

Project products

Data • 2019-12-16 • 33.64 KB
2017-145-DLD.xlsx

Summary

Excel data file of nutrition data derived from this project
Industry
Industry
PROJECT NUMBER • 2018-106
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Identifying electronic platforms to increase safety at sea in the Australian commercial fishing fleet

Maintaining safety at sea requires a multi-faceted and complex system including coordinating vessel integrity and the carriage of the correct equipment, the provision of accurate information on weather and sea conditions, the training of the crew and managing their actions at sea. ...
ORGANISATION:
Diversity Sustainable Development Consultants Pty Ltd
SPECIES
Environment