Sydney Fish Markets is launching the Australian Seafood Quality Index app, helping seafood buyers and restaurateurs to get a good indication of a product’s remaining shelf life.
App users complete a checklist on several attributes of the whole fish, including appearance, odour and texture. The scores for these categories are combined to generate a Quality Index score, which provides an indication of the remaining shelf life.
Jointly developed by Sydney Fish Market and The University of Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, the free app was funded by the Australian Seafood Co-operative Research Centre and the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation.
Chef at Sydney’s Sokyo restaurant, Chase Kojima, is throwing his weight behind the app’s launch. “At Sokyo, we pride ourselves on selecting and serving best and freshest seafood every day. The Quality Index app is a convenient tool for chefs and other seafood buyers, enabling them to gain a better understanding of the expected shelf life of chilled seafood to ensure produce is of an optimum standard,” he said.
Sydney Fish Market general manager, Bryan Skepper, said “This app was designed to incorporate established industry practices and present them in a user friendly, modernised way. It incorporates best practice seafood shelf life assessment and record keeping in one simple place.”
The app is suitable for use at a number of points throughout the food supply chain, including point of harvest, throughout transport, at auction, distribution and sale. Special features include the ability to archive files for further assessment, uploading images to a Dropbox account, and the capability to customise settings.