BlueTrace Blog

The article from the New Yorker is devastating:  A huge Chinese fleet, manned with at least some slave labor destroying the global squid fisheries to put calamari on the plate of US consumers.  

Our primary goal at BlueTrace is to streamline operations for our customers and save them valuable time. A significant aspect of achieving this goal is minimizing the time required to create tags and attach them to shellfish containers.

The journey of finding a reliable and durable paper product for our mobile printers has been an ongoing endeavor. However, the main challenge we encountered was the lengthy process of sourcing the perfect paper stock, obtaining samples, and conducting thorough testing.

But here's the exciting part: After collaborating with three vendors and meticulously testing five different paper stocks and perforation patterns, we have finally discovered a thicker paper stock that surpasses expectations in terms of durability and ruggedness for shellfish tags and labels. Now, let me delve into the process we underwent and the ultimate decisions we made...

We have seen a few tag materials that claim to be compostable and recyclable.  If true, this would be a boon to the seafood industry and we would be first in line to embrace it. But the reality is the commercial applications don’t live up to the hype.

Recalls happen--fortunately not very frequently--but they are a fact of life in any food industry. Most recalls are precautionary.  In other words, there are noconfirmed illnesses.  

Below are the details of a recall published on August 11, 2023--for oyster harvested in June 2023!!  I sure hope these are not still in circulation.  We checked with our clients and they are all clear. Hopefully no one got sick, but it clearly cost the folks involved a ton of time and hurt their reputation.   

The regulators are doing their job and making sure we all stay safe--and our industry stays healthy.  Let's all help make their jobs easy.  

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The receiving dock at seafood companies can be chaos.  

We recently watched a harried guy with a clipboard direct six forklifts unloading 14 tractor trailers' worth of seafood one morning. Salmon from Norway, squid from California, tuna from Costa Rica, lobster from Maine, mussels from Canada, oysters from the Chesapeake. The list went on and on.  

The FDA today announced the final rule for Food Traceability that was required by the Food Safety Modernization Act law.  We will explore this is future blog posts, but let's start with the high level: 

Many thanks to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute for putting together an amazing 4 minute video introducing BlueTrace.    Enjoy.

Our latest release introduced inventory labels. Why?