US seafood supplier rolls out QR product codes

A major mid-Atlantic seafood distributor has introduced a new information campaign to combat mislabe…

A major mid-Atlantic seafood distributor has introduced a new information campaign to combat mislabeling of seafood, featuring quick-response (QR) codes.

Congressional Seafood, based in Jessup, Md., announced this week that the company will now be issuing QR codes to its fishmonger and chef customers, to identify their products. The codes can be easily scanned by a cell phone to download information from the Internet on the company’s products.

The codes will link users to the seafood species, harvest location, fisherman biographies, farm backgrounds, and even photographs. The company is encouraging restaurateurs to publish the codes on menus and tabletop displays for customers to use, and the codes are expected to soon appear in grocery stores and fish counters wherever Congressional’s products are sold.

“Recent studies have found that seafood in the United States is often mislabeled and consumers are routinely given little or no information about the seafood they eat,” the company said in a release. “Congressional’s new traceability program offers a way to share information about the fish they sell to restaurants and retail stores throughout the mid-Atlantic region.”