The Nova Scotia Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture has plans to roll out a new live lobster certification program this year that will up the industry’s game in the marketing world.
An overview of the program and its development was presented at the Fisheries Minister’s Conference in Halifax on Feb. 22 by Stacey Frame, marine advisor for the department and Michelle Theriault, Director of the Universite Saintè-Anne Petit-de-Grat campus and coordinator of the Marine Research Centre.
The department has initiated the development of a scientific-based standardized certification program for live lobster by “putting together existing best practices in a standardized way and practices that we know could result in improved results for shipping, storage and maintaining the quality of lobster,” said Frame. “We know following the criteria will provide higher consistent quality,” which the live market demands.
Frame said while Nova Scotia is a world leader when it comes to live lobster exporters, concerns raised by consumers and importers have included inconsistent quality and low meat yields.
“There’s a level of expectation that is not consistently being met,” she said, which “puts existing consumers off and limits market opportunities. This program will allow you to mange product in such a way to confidently direct product to the appropriate chains,” helping to attract new customers and markets, and maintain existing markets.
Frame said there are two main goals of the program, increasing the value and improving the Nova Scotia brand to build customer confidence. The program will “enable suppliers to identify premium lobster products and demonstrate to customers they are meeting best practices and minimum quality standards. Our hope is consumers will see value in this and pay a premium for your product,” said Frame.
“Increasing value can mean many things from implementing change to decreasing mortality… increasing value also means minimizing waste. We’ve been told many times that down-stream mortality is factored into shore price. Lowering mortality throughout the value chain could mean more money in everyone’s pocket over time.”
The live lobster certification program has been in the development stages for several years now. “Ultimately my goal was to develop the framework,” said Theriault. Working with the department, Perennia and industry, the criteria was developed “with detailed consultation with industry stakeholders. We first did that to establish a baseline of practices in the industry and then we used both industry knowledge and some scientific knowledge to make an assessment of what was working and what wasn’t working and developed a set of standardized criteria and procedures.”
Like other quality standard programs, the intent is to “provide a high level of quality assurance to customers, said Theriault. “At the very least we wanted to ensure three things; that the lobsters were strong or vital, well-meated and were from Nova Scotia.”
The very basic steps for the framework are three main pillars, lobster handling best practices, lobster quality and lobster source which tie all together to traceability. “We’re not imposing anything new. We’re taking the best of what’s being done out there, and what’s proving to maintain quality and minimize mortality,” said Theriault.
It’s not just the mortality of lobster that the program is concerned with, said Theriault.
“It’s the weakening of lobster throughout the whole process. Initially a lobster could be grade A but because of improper handling it gets downgraded which is a loss value to the industry as well. Often times mortality or downgrading gets chalked up to unknown causes but in my experience often times you can find an actual reason for the weakening or mortality if you look for it.”
Low oxygen levels, delays in trucking, water temperatures and other factors all can create an unpredictability, but with the certification program these events can become identifiable with regular checks, monitoring and taking correction action, producing predictability and consistency in quality, said Theriault, adding a big part of best practices is water quality.
“That has a big impact on lobster quality, short term and long term,” said Theriault. Temperature, oxygen levels and salinity criteria has been built into the program for each lobster holding stage.
As part of the program, resource material has been developed for industry, which will be made available once its rolled out.
