Meet Ben Schwartz, a shellfish aficionado, a road cyclist, a SIRF Board member and Director of Food Safety and Quality Assurance at Harbor Seafood Inc. Schwartz was confirmed to the seat in 2021, based on recommendations from the previous holder, Pete Cardone, and Schwartz’s former Quality Assurance mentor Stephen Thompson. Among the many wonderful attributes of SIRF, Schwartz favors the ability to support research and education through seafood industry funding. Schwartz enjoys being able to honor the legacy of past and present titans of the industry through living and memorial funds.
Schwartz professes the importance of education; and how vital it is to support the next generation of scientists focused on the seafood industry to benefit consumers. As a part of what he would call a “small-big” industry, Schwartz’s perspective on the seafood industry was shaped early on with his Introduction to SIRF through involvement in the National Fisheries Institute and its Future Leaders Program, which he is grateful for Harbor Seafood ownership sponsoring him for the class of 2016. The program gave him the insight to see the relationships built between the large and small players of the industry. He saw the importance of every piece of the supply chain and their focus on a common goal, providing healthy meals to people all over the world
Working with SIRF has translated directly into his daily work with Food Safety Quality Assurance (FSQA), as SIRF supports and funds different research projects related to FSQA. Schwartz travelled with Margaret Malkoski, SIRF’s scientific liaison to visit Dr. Dan Distel at the marine science center of Northeastern University, where a DNA database for commercially traded seafood was funded to help combat seafood fraud.
There are some aspects of the seafood industry that have been eye opening for Schwartz since working with SIRF. Working with the Board gave him a stronger understanding of how the industry can support research and development. The SIRF funds focus more on applied scientific and research fields, and is a side of the industry most are not as well-versed in.
The Board itself is built of all different backgrounds and works as a whole body with a variety of perspectives and voices. Bringing different views together to create one voice is of the utmost importance. Guiding such an immense industry, Schwartz takes a lot of inspiration from former SIRF Board Member and founder of Harbor Seafood Pete Cardone, whom he describes as a big proponent of detail-oriented research and charitable endeavors that helped to support the seafood industry. Schwartz’s goal is to make clear lines of communication that allow and encourage collaboration.
In 2020, the FDA launched an initiative called the “New Era of Smarter Food Safety Blueprint”. It has four main pillars: tech-enabled traceability, smarter tools and approaches for prevention and outbreak response, new business models, and retail modernization. Still working to be fully
implemented by the FDA, it can be difficult to apply new regulations for such a vast industry.
For Schwartz, these pillars are a large part of his daily routine; traceability and foodborne illness prevention are at the forefront of food safety and quality assurance. He underlines the importance of advancing technology for traceability in such a complex category.
In the same vein of technology and traceability, the future of safety in the seafood industry grows as demand heightens. Seafood has always fallen into the healthy alternative category; however, the stigma surrounding the food hasn’t left. Schwartz explains that seafood is always the scapegoat when it comes to food poisoning, not the appetizer or the drinks; it must have been the fish. The focus on food safety in the future is to provide confidence to consumers.
Working with other companies, institutions, industries, and academia, like SIRF, will allow the development of new tools to help FSQA and allow for more efficiency as well.