FISH-FIT was created within the framework of the European Interreg Atlantic Area project SEATRACES ("Smart Traceability and Labeling ToolBox for a Sustainable Seafood Production") to support European control laboratories and institutions in seafood authenticity testing.

Traceability and labelling of fishery products are important prerequisites to combat illegal fishing, consumer deception and food fraud, which represent a serious risk to the economic development of the marine sector in the North Atlantic region. To uncover mislabelling and seafood fraud, mainly DNA-based methods are used by control institutions for a reliable species identification.

In this context, SEATRACES aimed to develop new methods and strategies to improve the identification and traceability of fishery products. FISH-FIT was developed under the leadership of the Max Rubner-Institut (MRI), the German Federal Research Institute of Nutrition and Food.

FISH-FIT offers authentic tissues of important European seafood species, including fish such as gadoids and tunas, but also molluscs and crustaceans are provided. The tissue materials can be requested to ensure the correctness and reliability of own measurement results. The authentic material and DNA sequences are provided jointly by the SEATRACES partners from France (Muséum National D'Histoire Naturelle), Spain (Instituto de Investigacións Mariñas and AZTI - Ciencia y tecnología marina y alimentaria), Portugal (Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera), the UK (Liverpool John Moores University) and Germany (Max Rubner-Institut).

In addition to the biobank, a DNA-sequence database of important seafood species is provided. The sequences were jointly prepared by the partners of the SEATRACES consortium and include relevant information of how they were generated. This information on primers, PCR protocols and references of the method will support the user with the preparation of own sequences. Users may identify their sequences by aligning them to those in the database in a simple alignment search tool.

Finally, a repository of standard operation procedures (SOP) and further valuable information as well as links to e.g. DIN, CEN or ISO methods facilitate seafood authenticity testing.

To exchange information we would like to invite you to the seafood traceability network at seatracenet.eu. SeaTraceNet engages experts from around the world with interest and knowledge in seafood species authentication, labelling and traceability, willing to share and exchange their experience, ideas and questions in this community.