"[Our] seafood industry is a dynamic business that produces some of the highest quality seafood in the world"

"We treat our seafood with respect, to bring you the best quality"

"We know what quality means, and we deliver!"

These marketing statements basically all say the same thing – but what is it?

They say that we are selling our seafood products into a discerning, competitive marketplace and that if we want to maintain and grow our market, and at a premium, then we need to deliver quality, and do so consistently.

So far so good – but first we have to answer the question: "What is this quality that we are striving to deliver?"

In their book HACCP in Meat, Poultry, and Fish Processing, Pearson and Dutson suggest that "to the seafood industry, quality can be interpreted as satisfying consumer expectations in terms of specific product quality attributes such as food safety, aesthetics, convenience and nutrition". This definition makes some sense, and is worth exploring.

These days, food safety is a given – we all expect that the food we buy will not harm us. But when it comes to aesthetics, convenience and nutrition we enter the subjective world of customer preference.

Which prompts the next question: "Who is the customer, and what do they want?"

Ultimately, it is the end-point customers – the consumers of our seafood – who set the quality demands for our product. If consumers like what they see and taste, then they’ll buy the product.

So it's critical that each supply chain (and here we can start with simple ideas of supply chains like finfish, crustacean, molluscs) works as a whole to understand who their consumers are and what they want.

If we consider the quality attributes discussed earlier, the two main areas that everyone in every supply chain in our industry can influence are food safety and aesthetics.

Our customers naturally expect their seafood to be safe and to look good, so it's up to us to make sure they get what they want. If we don't get it right, then our markets will suffer.

The basic principle here is that safety and aesthetic quality are as high as they can be when the seafood is caught or harvested. From that point on, each and every person in a supply chain has the ability to influence the quality of every product. This means we all have the responsibility of making sure we understand what we need to do to maintain quality – and doing it.

Yes, there are sometimes conflicting demands: time, weather, conditions, breakdowns, missed connections, limited resources all play a part.

But the Tasmanian seafood industry can only ever be as good as those who work in it. In the bigger picture, we aren't really competing against each other. We are players on a relatively small team operating in a global market place and, as such, I suggest we'll improve our returns by working more closely together.

If we accept that responsibility, and uncompromisingly focus on implementing industry-wide protocols for maintaining quality above all else, then we will be able to use hard evidence to promote Tasmania as a supplier of the best seafood in the world.

Tom Lewis manages the Seafood and Food Manufacturing Programs for Rural Development Services and can be contacted on 03 6231 9033 email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it