Story by: Tom Lewis

Whenever Tasmanian seafood industry members get together to discuss quality, chances are that they are really talking about product quality and the way in which our products are perceived and valued by our clients and customers.

Most enterprises will set out to provide our customers with consistently high product safety and quality by designing, implementing and managing a quality assurance system (QA).

But in business, we have legal and business obligations to consider other than just product safety and quality. Of these, probably the two most important, especially in this day and age, are how we care for the people who keep our business functioning, and how we care for the environment that sustains our business.

How many times have you seen people look away, duck and weave, when asked about their occupational health and safety (OH&S) systems or their environmental management systems (EMS).

But if you think about our aspirations for being known as producers of premium quality product, OH&S and EMS systems – and they are both really "quality" systems – are seen to be inextricably linked to product QA systems.

By way of a simplified example, let's start with OH&S. Effective OH&S systems provide our staff, visitors and contractors with a safe working environment. One aspect of a safe working environment for seafood enterprises will be a clean working environment, and one in which staff can operate effectively and efficiently. If the working environment is clean, and is set up so staff can get their job done easily, then it will decrease the chance of cross-contamination through that particular stage of the supply chain.

Now let's briefly consider how environmental management systems can influence product quality.

An EMS is a systematic process for identifying and controlling the way your business interacts with the physical and natural environment in which it operates. An EMS that is properly designed and well managed will allow your business to sustain and nurture its natural environment.

The quality of Tasmanian seafood ultimately is a reflection of the quality of the environment from which it is harvested. That’s why Tasmanian seafood is so highly prized – it comes from an environment famous for its cleanliness and naturalness.

It therefore follows that everything we can do and, importantly, be seen to be doing through the implementation of transparent environmental management systems, to sustain our natural environment is going to reflect directly on the quality of our products, and the subsequent demand for our seafood in the marketplace.

An earlier "Quality Matters" column discussed the importance of demonstrating to our markets the quality of both the environment from which our product is harvested and of the practices used throughout the supply chain.

This column explores this concept a tad further, arguing that that Tasmanian seafood enterprises can, and should, integrate the three main quality management systems – OH&S, EMS and QA – to allow us to produce premium quality seafood in a way that provides stewardship and protection for our people and our environment.

And we should tell the world about it.

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