Supply chain risk management firm Authentica is using an ingredient as simple as baker’s yeast to bolster food safety and risk management in the global seafood supply chain.
Authentica Founder and CEO Mike Borg told SeafoodSource at the 2025 Seafood Expo North America, which took place 16 to 18 March in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A., that importers, distributors, and anyone else who receives food products in their final packaged form obviously want to ensure they’re getting what they paid for. However, that can be difficult in a supply chain as complex as seafood’s.
That’s where Authentica’s technology comes in. By applying a little bit of baker’s yeast to a food product – which the firm calls a BioTag – at any point along its supply chain an importer or distributor can run the product through a standard molecular test to ensure that BioTag is still accounted for.
Borg said applying the BioTag is most valuable at the earliest possible point in the supply chain, preferably at a food product’s point of origin, such as a fish farm or processing facility.
“It’s applied to seafood in various ways, most often during a wash or an ice bath, and we apply it at just a few parts per million. You wouldn’t know it was there unless you were testing for it,” he said. “It doesn’t affect the products you apply it to. It’s not going to grow because it’s inactive. It’s not living.”
Borg further explained that the technology not only ensures that a shipment has come in as advertised, it can also determine whether any part of a shipment was adulterated somewhere along the supply chain …
