The CEN FishBizz (Integration of standards for Traceability and Sale of Seafood Products) Workshop has released the following draft CWA for public review:

CEN CWA XXXX: FishBizz Business Case — For monitoring of quality and sales of fish products

The reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) aims to provide a stable, secure and healthy food supply. Sustainability is at the heart of the proposed reform. Fishing sustainably means fishing at levels that do not endanger the reproduction of stocks and that provide high long-term yields. This requires managing the volume of fish taken out of the sea through fishing. At the same time, an improved framework for aquaculture is expected to increase production and supply of seafood.

To enforce the CFP rules, a control system is designed to ensure that fish products can be traced back and checked throughout the supply chain. Checks are carried out at every point in the chain from the boat to the retailer: in ports where fish is landed or trans-shipped, during transport, in factories that process fish and at markets where fish is sold. At every point along the chain, for every consignment of fish, information must be provided that proves that it was caught legally.

The CFP rules require that all fish products are traceable to their source. To achieve traceability throughout the fish product supply chain, various tracking and tracing methodologies and technologies must be integrated in the operational business processes carried out by the different actors along the chain. As a result, different traceability systems must have the ability to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged. Traceability systems by the different actors along the chain must be interoperable to guarantee fast, accurate and cost-effective exchange of information.

Standardization is a common approach towards achieving interoperability. There is also a wide range of technologies, ranging from simple to advanced IT systems, and from open source to closed source commercial systems, which can support a standard. The challenge lies in the fact that there is often more than one standard available and used by the actors along the supply chain. Some standards have a narrow point-to-point profile aimed at achieving, so called, "one-up/one-down" traceability with immediate trade partner systems. Other standards are either focused on establishing a "chain-of-custody" system via a central repository maintained by a third party, or focused on "traceability networks" that are based on registries that enable traceability data search along the fish product supply chain.

The FishBizz project team reviewed various CEN, ISO, UN/CEFACT, OASIS and GS1/EPC standards used for electronic commerce in the seafood sector. These range from standards at data component level and standards aimed at general principles for designing a traceability system, trough standards that specify how electronic transactions should be executed and standards for business collaboration, including end-to-end supply chain visibility. The aim is to leverage multiple complementary standards rather than picking one isolated standard that may be strong in some areas, but weak in others. This will enable broader, more integrated traceability functionalities and enable lower cost implementations.

The outcome of the work conducted so far is a Draft of a CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA). It specifies the data elements drawn from the work conducted under ISO TC 234, current regulatory and industry requirements, and the profiling and extensions to the UN/CEFACT reusable aggregate XML schema module to support traceability and e-business requirements. The interoperable solution outlined in the Draft CWA supports the critical traceability and e-business business processes, which are:

1. Advising the dispatch and receipt of products in accordance with the UN/CEFACT Business Requirement Specification for the Cross Industry Despatch and Receipt process (UN/CEFACT XML Despatch Advice). (The UN/CEFACT XML Receipt Advice yet has to be defined by UN/CEFACT)

2. Initiating and responding to a traceability request in accordance with the GS1 Global Traceability Standard. The Trace Request document and the response Trace Document are proposed new documents. They are used in the Request Trace business transaction to specify the trade item(s) for which a trace-back is requested and the trace-back information, respectively. There is a discussion with the UN/CEFACT Agriculture Program Development Area to submit these new document schemas to UN/CEFACT.

3. Notifying traceability is a newly defined business process in which instead of sending the traceability information in response to a Trace Request, this information is proactively sent as a notification. The recipient of the information can be a third party, such as a traceability service provider that acts as a certified data trustee.

The CWA also explains mechanisms to exchange these documents using the AS4 profile of ebMS3.

Comments are to be sent to the workshop secretary using the CEN commenting form