ABSTRACT
In an ideal world, if you were to order some Norwegian salmon in an elegant Parisian restaurant and wanted assurance of its quality, the chef could produce for you its full pedigree-its age, provenance, nutritional value, when and where it was processed, and so forth. Polar Seafood, the second-largest fish-farming company in the world, aims to make this ideal an everyday reality. And it’s experiencing considerable outside pressure to do so. Not only do its customers-restaurants, smoke houses, specialty stores-want this information, but so do regulatory agencies. Why? Mounting health concerns. Just as the beef industry has been periodically crippled by the Mad Cow Disease, the fish-farming industry has felt the effects of its own epidemics, caused by everything from algae attacks to ocean pollution. So it’s essential that when an epidemic occurs, authorities can quickly determine its scope and trace the problem to its specific origin. This is known, in the trade, as “traceability.” And solving the challenge of ensuring traceability at Polar Seafood falls squarely on the shoulders of a 32-year-old biologist named Arne Olsen. Arne is a slender, unassuming Norwegian whose personal ease and discipline match the story he tells in his interview.
