SafeFish
SafeFish, provides technical advice to support Australia’s seafood trade and market access negotiations and helps to resolve barriers to trade.
SafeFish is primarily funded by the Fisheries Research & Development Corporation (FRDC) and is the leading platform in their program for dealing with food safety and trade and market access issues affecting Australian seafood.
Technical Program
The technical program is underpinned by a strategy to identify current and emerging food safety and market access issues, prioritise these issues, and undertake technical work to provide potential solutions to overcome those of highest priority. This is known as the SafeFish prioritisation process, and is used as a robust method of determining the work program.
Current Technical Research
Following the 2021 hazard identification and prioritisation process that was held, the following issues were identified as having the highest priority to the Australian seafood industry. For the 2022-2025 period technical research on the following items will be undertaken to assist in addressing them:
- The impacts from ready-to-eat seafood due to consumer change with a focus on Listeria monocytogenes
- Chemical contaminants
- Vibrio in seafood
- Ciguatera – facilitating the Australian response to a Code of Practice currently being developed through CODEX
- Micro and nano plastics in seafood (watching brief)
Latest Content
The latest collection of SafeFish technical reports, communication outputs, news and articles can be found here.
SafeFish Microplastics in Seafood Webinar
On 17th May 2024 SafeFish held a virtual webinar on the impacts of microplastics in seafood, the current situation in Australia, and how we are managing the risk. This was recorded and can be viewed by clicking here.
An Introduction to Shellfish Safety
UTAS in conjunction with Oysters Australia, FRDC and SafeFish have developed an induction course for Industry to build awareness of key topics in the production of safe bivalve shellfish. This course is fully online and currently free to access by clicking here.
Shellfish Safety Supervisors Course
UTAS in conjunction with Oysters Australia, FRDC and SafeFish have developed a detailed industry food safety course outlining key topics that supervisors need to be aware of in the production of safe bivalve shellfish. This course is fully online and currently free to access by clicking here.
Codex Committee on Fish and Fishery Products (CCFFP)
CCFFP worked by correspondence in Oct 2024 and focussed on a number of issues relevant to Seafood. For more information, click here.
SafeFish Quarterly Meeting
SafeFish will be holding its next virtual quarterly meeting on March 31st 2025 from 11:30-3:30pm (ACST). These meetings are open to all interested SafeFish stakeholders. To register your interest to attend, please contact the secretariat.
SafeFish Annual Report 2022-23
The 2022-2023 SafeFish Annual report is now available online. If you would like a printed version mailed to you, please contact the secretariat to request a copy.
