Marine scalefish sector - Seafood Services Australia food safety pilot project
With the establishment of state based networks it is increasingly important to ensure that the products and services developed and delivered by Seafood Services Australia are relevant to and driven by local needs.
The original SeaQual food safety guidelines for harvesting, processing and retailing seafood were developed specifically to meet the requirements of Victorian legislation. Since then there have been changes in the development of the ANZFA national food safety standards as well as a number of SSA initiatives including the seafood food safety risk analysis, development of a draft seafood safety standard and the development of a national seafood food safety emergency management plan. The National Seafood Industry Training Package, released in March 2000, identifies food safety as one of the core competencies for anyone working in the seafood industry.
It is now timely to review the SeaQual food safety guidelines to ensure that they are pragmatic and relevant to various fishing industry sectors. In particular it is important to demonstrate that developing a food safety plan can be done at any level in the industry. To date there has not been much effort placed in relation to food safety in small, multi species, multi method fishing operations.
Demonstrating that the SeaQual food safety guidelines are useful pragmatic tools relevant to the whole industry will be an important aspect in developing the customer focus necessary to achieve an internationally competitive industry. The project will use the SeaQual food safety guidelines for harvesting and the associated template to develop specific fishery type models to further enhance the capacity of fishing businesses to understand and comply with their customer’s and the legislative requirements for production of safe food.
Final report
South Australia's Strategic Plan for Fisheries and Aquaculture Research
The Strategy published in 1998 is recognised as a very useful document but one that now needs to be reviewed and articulated better. Currently, the plan specifies 10 broad research priorities for each of the 8 industry sectors. These priorities need to be more concise and better focussed to provide clearer indicators for funding of appropriate research. Consideration needs to be given to incorporating a Marine Environment R&D Strategy that conforms to the present initiatives in SA which are supervised by the Marine Managers Forum.
The document also needs to be more "outcomes" focussed and to specify performance indicators for its effectiveness.
The Strategy Document structure needs to be improved to present useful and comprehensible information to a broad range of stakeholders.
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