SafeFish 2025-2030

Project background

SafeFish provides technical advice to support Australia’s seafood trade and market access negotiations. It helps resolve barriers to trade by bringing together experts in food safety and hygiene to collaborate with industry and regulators.

The partnership works to identify, prioritise, and address technical issues that affect the fair and efficient export of Australian seafood.

SafeFish 2025-2030 is a joint collaboration between the University of Tasmania (UTAS) and SARDI. The project is supported by funding from the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC) on behalf of the Australian Government and through direct industry contributions

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Objectives

• Provide technical expertise to enable rapid responses that support free and fair access to key markets.
• Support the safety and integrity of seafood sold commercially.

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Research approach

SafeFish provides technical advice to help resolve challenges related to the export, import, and domestic trade of Australian seafood. Its key functions include:

• Providing technical input to international multilateral and bilateral trade negotiations to open new markets or resolve trade disruptions.
• Providing technical input to Australian submissions on the development of seafood standards, guidelines and codes of practice at Codex Alimentarius.
• Providing research and technical support to food safety incidents to minimise trade disruptions, including supporting appropriate risk communication.
• Identifying emerging food safety issues and determining appropriate research and technical responses to protect Australia’s continued access to markets.
• Conducting research on seafood hazards to support risk management decisions.
• Facilitating and coordinating national and international expert networks (including networks between researchers, industry and regulators).
• Developing and supporting food safety research and diagnostic capabilities.
• Supporting productive partnerships between industry and regulators to enable utilisation of research findings and to facilitate considered responses to food safety issues.
• Capability development through workshops, post graduate students, online resources for stakeholders such as reports, fact sheets, frequently asked questions, and articles.

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Expected outcomes

SafeFish aims to deliver the following outcomes:

• help fishing sectors understand and manage food safety and market access risks
• strengthen Australia’s international food safety reputation through collaborations with international experts, peer-reviewed publications, and active input into Codex
• maintain trusted networks of communication between the seafood industry and regulators
• sustain free and fair access to key markets and uphold the safety and hygiene credentials of Australian seafood, demonstrated through Codex engagement, WTO SPS notification reviews, industry support, and incident response
• enable Australia to lead the development of international food safety standards and guidelines that support—and do not restrict—market access
• minimise trade disruptions by enabling rapid response to food safety incidents and improving diagnostic tools, testing capabilities, and risk-management strategies.