March 28, 2012 – Agar Supply, New England’s largest independent food distributor, has partnered with Legal Sea Foods to launch a new label that will allow restaurants and supermarkets to track fresh fish all along the supply chain.
Legal Sea Foods wholesale division, Nor’Easter, will supply nearly all of the fresh fish marketed under Agar’s “Nautifish” brand, including haddock, cod, salmon, and tuna. Nor’Easter is creating a barcode label on each package that will include details such as when the seafood was caught, the name of the boat and captain, the region where the fish was caught, and when it was prepared for packaging.
“Seafood can sometimes be an underhanded business and we have a commitment to truth in marketing,” said Karen S. Bressler, chief executive of Agar Supply. “The restaurants don’t always know what they’re getting. There may be companies selling fresh haddock that might have previously been frozen and they don’t tell restaurants. We want to let restaurants know exactly what they’re buying as consumers demand more information.”
The recent attention to seafood labeling, packaging, and overall quality in Massachusetts prompted Agar Supply, which moves millions of pounds of seafood each year through its plant in Taunton, to increase its focus on traceability. The results of a five-month Globe investigation published last fall revealed extensive mislabeling at restaurants across the state, including repeated instances where restaurants advertised previously frozen seafood from the Pacific as fresh, locally caught fish.
Read the full story at the Boston Globe.