Retailers, wholesalers, and seafood suppliers today gained an easier way to achieve compliance with the food tracking regulation FSMA 204 after Trace Register, a seafood industry provider of full-chain traceability and data management services, said it would work together with ReposiTrak, the food traceability and regulatory compliance network.
The new collaboration means that seafood suppliers and the retailers and wholesalers they serve can now manage a fast, easy exchange of FDA-required Key Data Elements (KDEs), the partners said.
“FSMA 204 compliance is possible without the need for new work – or rework – in our already taxed supply chains,” ReposiTrak Chairman and CEO Randy Fields said in a release. “The ReposiTrak Traceability Network translates and organizes the data in the same way for seafood as it does for other FSMA 204 categories like produce and deli, providing the retailer or wholesaler with the same trusted transparency across the board.”
Since 2005, seafood suppliers have been sharing traceability data through Trace Register for regulatory, food safety, and sustainability purposes. During that same time, ReposiTrak has built a network of 30,000 companies (including more than 1,000 seafood suppliers) sharing regulatory, financial, and compliance documentation, as well as traceability data, to meet the requirements of the FDA’s FSMA 204 food traceability law.
That law requires additional traceability recordkeeping for foods on the Food Traceability List (FTL), which includes countless varieties of fresh, frozen and previously frozen finfish, smoked finfish, crustaceans, and molluscan shellfish.
“Throughout our conversations, we came to understand the complementary aspects of our data sets and data exchange capabilities,”Trace Register President Heath England said. “Trace Register is already collecting the FDA-required KDEs from seafood suppliers. Now, through interoperability with ReposiTrak, that specific data set can be sent to their retailer and wholesaler customers without the need to log in to one more portal or system.”
