Tellspec launches the EIT-funded FishQC and Fraud system

Fish fraud is a global issue as roughly 20% of seafood worldwide is mislabelled. Wholesalers, retailers, restaurants, catering businesses and consumers deserve to know the facts about their fish supply chain, including what kind of fish it is, its nutritional profile, and how fresh it is.

Fish fraud can negatively impact consumer’s health; this occurs when fish species that are toxic are substituted for non-toxic species. It can also affect the nutritional quality of the fish, as it can happen when species from polluted waters are substituted for marine fish. It damages the integrity of the fish supply chain and consumer trust. Furthermore, fish fraud it can result in severe economic consequences by tarnishing the national reputation of a country in the global food market.

Through funding received from EIT, Tellspec now contributes to a solution of the above mentioned fraudulent practices by offering a new real-time, reliable, portable, affordable and friendly-to-use monitoring system.

The FishQC and Fraud system is composed of an NIR spectroscopic sensor and a fish analysis engine based on AI algorithms running in the cloud.

The AI algorithms are trained using scans of samples for which laboratory data was also obtained, and when given a scan of a new sample, they intelligently predict what a laboratory would report for that sample.

The Tellspec’s system allows to measure in real-time:

• The actual species of the fish
• Whether the fish is wild or farmed
• Whether the fish is fresh or defrosted
• Fish quality (fat, protein, moisture)
• Fish spoilage (days of decay)

Learn more here.

The project is a collaboration between the five below which spread between United Kingdom (coordinating country), Spain and Italy: Tellspec, AZTI (Tecnalia), Queen’s University Belfast, Microbion and Waitrose