Advice – Traceability

The major climate change and environmental risks associated with feed and its ingredients, such as land conversion for agricultural commodities and overexploitation and bycatch in wild capture fisheries, typically take place at the location of their production or capture.

Supply chain members, such as farmed seafood suppliers, buyers, and feed manufacturers, should therefore be able to identify the source ingredients used in feed and trace these to a level at which they can identify the risks posed by the ingredients or verify compliance with their sustainability commitments. This will involve supply chain mapping. 

Supply chain mapping is a process to identify the actors in a company’s supply chain and the relationships among them. Supply chain mapping should include attribute information about suppliers that is useful for assessing risk and compliance, such as the supplier´s location, certifications held, dates and results of audits, and workforce characteristics – AFI.

Farmed seafood stakeholders at any stage of the supply chain must institute a sufficient level of traceability through one or more of the following methods:

• Tracing materials back to the production or processing units of origin;
• Tracing materials back to an intermediate supplier that has effective control mechanisms in place to ensure that its supplies are traced to the production or processing units of origin, and can provide sufficient evidence of this to the buyer;
• Utilizing credible assurance systems (e.g., credible certification systems) that link raw material supplies with production units that have specific compliance or performance attributes; or,
• Tracing materials to jurisdictions or landscapes where it can be demonstrated that performance concerning specific climate change, environmental, or other issues fulfills the buyer’s commitments on these topics.

Recommendations

If you have not already, SFP recommends that companies take the following actions:

• Identify the feed manufacturers in your supply chain. For example, map your farmed seafood supply chains to specific aquaculture farms. Use this information to identify the manufacturers providing their feed.
• Advocate through the supply chain for greater transparency on all aquaculture feed ingredients from manufacturers.
• If not publicly available or available in sufficient detail, request information about the sources of all aquaculture feed ingredients – to the fishery or jurisdiction-level
• Consider what a sourcing policy or commitment on feed would look like.
• Get involved in pre-competitive improvement initiatives to understand, measure, and ultimately reduce the climate change and environmental impacts of aquaculture feed ingredients.

• Achieving adequate traceability is an essential component of establishing and managing a sustainable and ethical supply chain.
• Traceability is a long-term process and part of improved supplier engagement. It may take many years to achieve full traceability to the production level. Define a plan to gradually increase supply chain visibility and continue to move it forward. 
• At the same time, remember that full traceability is not the ultimate goal. The goal is to improve supply chain transparency to a point where risks and any associated improvements can be identified.  
• The further downstream a company is (those distributing products to the final customer), the more it needs to rely on the actions of its upstream suppliers to achieve traceability.
• It may be difficult to reach the farm level. However, in some cases, it can be possible to claim that an ingredient is risk-free (e.g., soybean is deforestation-free) if the ingredient comes from a landscape/region covered by a credible programme at-scale scheme. 
• Define what traceable means Upstream companies, those that include activities related to the organization’s suppliers such as sourcing and processing raw materials, should prioritize traceability in countries where the potential risks are highest and aim to reach traceability to the production unit-level for direct commodity (soybean) purchase, and then for indirect purchase e.g. when buying from a silo or cooperative.
• Downstream companies, those distributing the product to the final customer, should trace supplies upstream until they can verify compliance or identify the nature of non-compliance. They should start with products with a greater commodity footprint and shorter supply chains. They can aim for increasing granularity e.g., starting with the country of origin for the commodity and then moving to biome and jurisdiction (state/province) level, and then to production units in high-risk sourcing areas.
• Gather information from direct suppliers Companies should engage with their suppliers to explain why traceability is needed and their expectations on the information that needs to be shared with them to achieve this.
• Map your supply chain Downstream companies can use open platforms such as TRASE that link soy and other commodities purchased from traders to the location of production (country/or sub-national).
• Downstream companies can build upon and harmonize with supplier’s existing programmes.
• Upstream and downstream companies can develop their traceability system or contract an existing one. This is time-consuming and expensive so is most effective with large volumes and relatively short supply chains. 
• Categorize volumes purchased and validate the information Commodities that can be traced back to the jurisdiction or unit of production can be classified as known. Commodities that cannot be traced should be classified as Unknown.
• It is important to understand how suppliers gather their information and how accurate it is. Therefore, companies may need to validate information provided by suppliers. If information cannot be validated a supplier may need the support of the company to improve their traceability system.
• Monitor traceable volumes  The feed ingredient market is dynamic and subject to changes in their origin of supply and associated volume. Companies should establish systems that reassess the volumes classified as known at regular intervals.

To learn more, view  AFI and Proforest in this Toolkit or download the AFI’s position and guidance on traceability and its guidance for companies.

The World Resources Institute also provides advice on Traceability and Transparency in Supply Chains for Agricultural and Forest Commodities.