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The Center for Quality Assurance and ScoringAg announce that the 2006 salmon season marks the beginning for deployment of the ScoringAg Point-to-Point Traceback™ recordkeeping system. This will enable Alaska Quality Seafood (AQS) to gather inspection and handling data at each location and report on developing trends in real time for mandated recordkeeping and traceback starting with this salmon season. This technology was developed by ScoringAg in collaboration with AQS as it applies to seafood quality assurance, and will be enabled by Alaska Communication System's EVDO broadband network.
Over 5.4 billion pounds of fish and shellfish worth at least $1.3 billion were harvested in Alaskan waters in 2005. AQS is based in Anchorage, Alaska. Alaska is one of the most bountiful fishing regions in the world, produces a wide variety of seafood with over fifty percent of the US commercially harvested fish. The Alaska Quality Seafood Program is ensuring that the best seafood in the world is also the most consistent and highest quality. Working with fishermen and processors, the AQS Program has improved handling procedures and established uniform grading standards, and certifies the effort with independent third-party quality inspections. As a result, seafood buyers throughout the world distribution chain will receive the exact grade of salmon they specify, each and every time they order.
The Alaskan salmon industry is the only and largest salmon industry in the world to be certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council. Seafood has been and remains Alaska’s top export commodity. The commodity inspections, whether on board, at the receiving station, or in the plant, including handling and all other inspection data, will be entered in real time, via handhelds, laptops with wireless broadband connections, and fed into web based data servers where it immediately becomes available for use. This technology, pioneered by ScoringAg, customized in collaboration with AQS as it applies to seafood quality assurance, is positioning itself to not only be the tool of choice for quality accountability in the food supply chain, but it may also very well become a low cost solution for the FDA’s bioterrorism laws mandated recordkeeping requirements of tracking and traceability in the US.
The wild and farm-raised fish/shellfish recordkeeping process must be in place by June 9, 2006 for US operations that have 11 or more employees. After this date, all records must be available to the FDA as soon as possible, and no longer than 24 hours after a request is made if contamination is tracked to a fish/shellfish handling operation. AQS will meet an exceed these national and other international rules with the ScoringAg database.
ScoringAg provides all Site-Specific Recordkeeping™ for both FDA and EU regulations as well as rules from other countries with precise location records (PIDC code) of the product and the activities associated with traceability and/or traceback, which is available in just seconds. ScoringSystem's PIDC traceability system uses the ISO standard for location and property identification. However, ScoringSystem has developed a more comprehensive system to define all land and sea locations globally, including those areas that are not recognised or covered by the ISO standard, the UN and other international organizations. The records requested by the FDA may be related to the manufacture, processing, packing, transporting, distribution, receiving, holding, or shipping of articles of food that are maintained by, or on behalf of, an entity subject to the recordkeeping regulation, and at any location along the food chain in case of an incident or event.
ScoringAg's Point-to-Point Traceback™ system using PIDC location codes will keep the catch ID and/or RFID number from the catch site through the processing stage or storage, to the transporter's log through every processing stage, from the fishermen’s net to the table, for AQS member fishermen and processors. Each fish/shellfish label will carry an SSI-EID number code, RFID coded chip and/or barcode corresponding to that particular item's total history of food handlers and its hygiene quality for the new FDA Bioterrorism rules and the EU Food Controls Regulation 882/2004. The Alaska Quality Seafood Program will increase the confidence of seafood buyers in Alaska salmon, decrease labor and other costs associated with misgraded fish, increase product shelf life and decrease waste using best management practices and ScoringAg records.
ScoringAg.com and its traceback and traceup system for agriculture products, featuring Site-Specific Recordkeeping™ and PIDC location codes, is one of the many divisions of ScoringSystem, Inc. Located in Sarasota, Florida USA, the company specializes in providing solutions with mobile data, via wireless PDAs, laptops, and Semacode programmed Nokia, Siemens, and Sony Ericsson cell phones. With the use of RFID labels and barcodes for traceup and traceback of livestock and crops, produce, fish/shellfish or tracking transport containers or perishable meats and other food consumer goods. ScoringAg.com makes managing data easier - and does it in an extremely cost effective manner from producer to consumer.
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wkanitz[.]scoringsystem.com 
