1: Consumer Information
1a: General Seafood Purchasing
Seafood is a fantastic source of high-quality protein, vitamins, and minerals that support overall health and well-being. Many types of fish and shellfish are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which are known to improve heart health, reduce inflammation, and support brain function. Eating seafood regularly can also help maintain healthy eyesight and strengthen the immune system because it contains important nutrients such as vitamin D, zinc, and selenium. In addition, seafood is often lower in saturated fat than other protein sources, making it a healthy choice for people who want to maintain a balanced diet and reduce the risk of chronic diseases. In particular, we recommend sardines, as they have fantastic health benefits, are affordable, and have the lowest environmental impact.
Seafood can also have a lower carbon footprint compared to many forms of meat, especially beef and lamb, which require large amounts of land, feed, and water to produce. Sustainable fishing and aquaculture practices can further reduce environmental impacts by using fewer natural resources and producing fewer greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, choosing responsibly sourced seafood can be a more environmentally friendly option for people looking to reduce the climate impact of their diet.
Why not download and try our sustainable seafood recipe cards here!
1b: Consumer Survey Information
A comprehensive study of consumer preferences and behaviours in regard to seafood and seafood purchasing was perfromed by the University of Bologna, WRG Europe, and JSI. The work consisted of a series of behavioral experiments testing consumer responses to different aspects of seafood products, based on information on consumer clusters and behaviors gathered in earlier studies. These experiments investigate consumer inclinations towards environmental impact, label details, production origin and animal welfare, among others. The work offers insight into how consumers make choices in immersive and realistic scenarios and inform future engagement strategies. Some highlights are given below:
Drivers of Consumption
- Branding: Producer brands are among the strongest drivers of choice, reflecting consumer trust and perceived quality assurance.
- Familiarity and quality perception: Turbot and Sea bream consistently emerged as the most favored options, combining familiarity with high perceived quality.
- Sensory attributes: consumers particularly appreciated delicate, well-balanced flavor of Turbot and Sea bram, with lower preferences for more “rustic” and marine flavours and textures of Mussels and Trout (in Italy)
- Labels, sustainability, and cultural context: Certification and traceability claims had only moderate impact, while cultural familiarity (e.g., higher trout acceptance in Slovenia) significantly influenced choices.
Barriers to Consumption
- Processing and freshness perception: Strong preference for fresh, low processed fish (Whole cleaned), while Ready-to-cook and Frozen options were less frequently chosen.
- Sensory challenges: Intense or earthy flavors, especially in trout (earthy, bitter, briny notes) and mussels (bitterness, aftertaste, exudate, turbidity), reduced liking and willingness to pay a premium
- Price sensitivity: Limited willingness to pay a premium for high-end species like turbot and sea bream, with most consumers prioritizing value-for-money.
Areas for Intervention
- Improve consumer understanding and trust in aquaculture
- Promote clear, informative, and harmonised labelling
- Encourage sustainable and responsible consumption
- Increase visibility and accessibility of farmed fish products
- Support innovation in product formats and communication channels
- Educational programs on environmental impact and animal welfare in aquaculture
You can download the full report here!
2) The FishEUTrust Game
Our partners Belit and JSI are developing an interactive game to help you understand the importance of monitoring, logistics, and aquaculture parameters on seafood quality. This turn-based puzzle game uses the FishEUTrust platform data and expert-defined interpretation rules to introduce players to the seafood value chain. Through engaging gameplay, it highlights real-world challenges and key features of the platform, exploring topics such as traceability, health, food quality, sustainability, sensors, and measurement data.
The game is still under development and new features will be added in upcoming version, but you can try the beta version here. We would also value your feedback, which you can submit via TypeForm here.
3) AquaCulture Comic Book
Under separate funding, IPMA have produced a comic book that helps consumers to understand, in an accessible way, the importance of aquaculture in a sustainable seafood economy. It is suitable for most age groups including adults. You can access the full comic book at the URL below.
4) Virtual Reality for Seafood Transparency and Consumer Trust
Virtual environments developed by UNIBO are a fun way to test in-depth consumers preferences. Consumers are engaged in virtual choice experiments where their preferences toward seafood products can be analysed, considering parameters as specimen, preparation, labelling, and willingness to pay. Results of these activities will help us define the key characteristics of innovative products and processes/innovations that are more appealing for different target consumer groups and will be the theoretical basis for the definition of the most effective monetary and non-monetary interventions that will increase demand for seafood products.
You can experience the virtual supermarket environment here!
5) FishEUTrust Platform
The central integration point of FishEUTrust the project is the platform, which collects data and connects software components into a unified system, providing end-to-end tracking of seafood and related information - from breeding or fishing, through storage, transportation, repacking, and processing, to the end consumer. The platform enables traceability at varying levels of granularity and supports data management, analytics, and visualization.
At the core of the traceability is the batch - a minimal traceable unit and the central point for tracking products and their lifecycles throughout the value chain. This concept is abstract and can represent various units, such as aquaculture, a single fish, a part of fish, any number of fish, mussels, cans, or any combination thereof. A batch can be split into smaller batches, multiple batches can be merged into a new larger batch, and a batch can be transformed into another batch (for example, when raw food is processed into canned food). Connected to the batches are their attributes - versioned key-value pairs, documents and certificates, lifecycle phase descriptions, ownership and access transfer information, measurements, locations and analyses from sensors and external platforms, and more.
The platform offers flexible knowledge integration, including nutrient or product composition data, impact metrics such as the HEalth Nutritional Index (HENI) and GreenHouse Gas (GHG) emission levels,and more complex analyses (like toxins contamination or freshness). Interpretation rules contribute to complex event processing and the notification system.
You can see the FishEUTrust platform in action on our YouTube channel here.
You can login to and access the FishEUTrust platform here.
You can read the user manual here.