A New York seafood distributor is using computerized tracking to ensure that the fish on your plate is the one that you ordered.
Thanks to the local sustainable-food revolution, we know the name and address of the organic farm where our arugula was harvested and our humanely raised chicken roamed free. But when it comes to fisha highly perishable and ecologically fraught commoditythis kind of transparency is almost nonexistent. Fraud is rampant: A 2016 study by the ocean conservation advocacy group Oceana revealed that as much as a third of seafood sold in the U.S. is mislabeled. Put another way, your local red snapper could be farmed Asian catfish or some other bottom-feeding species that was caught using illegal methods or even slave labor.
Sean Barrett is trying to change that. Five years ago, the Montauk, N.Y.-based fish distributor started Dock to Dish using community-supported agriculture as a model: Restaurants pay a flat rate for a share of what local fishermen catch each day. Today Dock to Dish supplies world-renowned chefs like Dan Barber and Thomas Keller, as well as the kitchen at Google’s New York office. The program has spread to fisheries in Vancouver, British Columbia; San Francisco; Washington, D.C.; Nicaragua; Costa Rica; and Los Angeles, where there is a waiting list to subscribe.
Barrett’s new initiative, Dock to Dish 2.0, uses recent advances in vessel traceability to offer live, public tracking of fishing boats and delivery vehicles, along with information about who caught the fish and how andperhaps most importantwhen it was caught.
It’s one of the most highly perishable foodstuffs on the planet, and nobody has ever put a date on it, Barrett says. Beer has a born on’ date. Fish? It’s just the honor system.
Despite what restaurant blackboards suggest, their catch of the day may not be what it seems. Around 90% of the seafood consumed in the U.S. is importedcompared with less than 25% of fresh vegetables and 14% of beef. Fish can pass through a dozen hands and travel thousands of miles before reaching the plate. And there are no legal requirements to document its journey.
The entire U.S. seafood system is a shell game, Barrett says. The game is to source at the lowest price and sell at the highest price, and in between there’s a huge incentive to lie and misrepresent what species it is, how it was caught, and where and when it was caught.
Barrett launched a Kickstarter financing campaign for Dock to Dish 2.0 in March and exceeded his $75,000 fund-raising target by the end of the month. When a Dock to Dish-enabled fishing boat lands 250 pounds of line-caught tilefish off the coast of Long Island, that information is entered into a digital database system called Fishtrax, which tracks bar codes attached to boxes of fish. Both the boat and the delivery van are outfitted with solar-powered geospatial tracking devices designed by Pelagic Data Systems, allowing chefs to track the progress of their fish in real time and providing an electronically verified record of the path it took to reach them.
Suddenly, Barretta plain-spoken habitué of Long Island fishing dockshas become an improbable standard-bearer for bringing the seafood industry into the digital age. He plans to offer his open-source technology free of charge to anyone who asks, and he has suggested that only unscrupulous sellers would resist.
Barrett’s charges have made him a controversial figure in certain seafood circles, but industry experts echo his calls for transparency.
The amount of false information in seafood appears to greatly exceed that in other foods, says author and marine ecologist Carl Safina. The mislabeling is almost comically blatant. If consumers want to be educated and get the right stuff, that doesn’t really arm them against being lied to.
Still, it’s unclear how far Dock to Dish’s technology will spread without government regulations requiring it. Paul Greenberg, who has written extensively about American fisheries, doubts consumers know enough about seafood fraud to place a value on live tracking, and he believes price will be an obstacle. Tracking is designed to promote local, sustainable catch, which is often more expensive than its imported competition, and many people, according to Greenberg, will be unwilling or unable to pay. The No. 1 thing that influences customers is price, Greenberg says. And that has been borne out again and again.
Barrett’s hope is thatas with seasonal eating and humanely raised meatseafood traceability will trickle down from high-end restaurants because of demand. His new system is up and running in New York. Michael Cimarusti, the chef of Providence in Los Angeles and an early supporter of Dock to Dish, said he’s eager to bring the 2.0 version to the West Coast as soon as humanly possible.
The idea is to put a flag on the moon, to show the world that end-to-end tracking can be done, Barrett says. He’s no longer alone. In August, Canadian meat and seafood supplier Albion Farms & Fisheries announced plans to incorporate live tracking for its wild salmon. Barrett believes that a decade from now, Dock to Dish 2.0’s technology will look rudimentary compared with what larger outfits can provide. Hopefully, people will be saying, If you can’t track it, don’t buy it,’ he says.
2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.