A New Map for Produce Traceability

GARY FLEMING

WITH SO MUCH ATTENTION being given these days to food safety and the importance of tracking and tracing products, it is important to understand the difference between traceability within your own four walls (“internal traceability”) vs. traceability between trading partners (“external traceability”).

Recent research suggests that many companies believe they have an effective traceability program. While this may be true for their internal traceability systems, it does not address external traceability as defined by the one-step-up and one-step-down provision of the Bioterrorism Act. Having both an internal and external traceability program is the only way to allow our industry a full view of who handled a product, when, and how it was handled as it makes its journey through the supply chain.

A company can usually track or trace an item inside its own organization provided that, in the event of an incident, they are given the information germane to their internal traceability system. This information is typically proprietary in nature and can only be understood by its creator. Without this necessary information, that company would not be able to track or trace the product in question. This is an example of an internal traceability system that only works for that one company.

With external traceability, on the other hand, every link of the supply chain uses a common language based upon standards and established best practices. The data and informational standards being advocated by the Produce Traceability Initiative is the GS1 standard, whose data standards are already being used by the buying community and by more than 2 million companies worldwide in over 105 countries and 26 different industries. These standards will serve as links between trading partners, allowing each handler of the product to connect to their own internal traceability programs to begin investigation on what happened with the product while in their possession.

As the sources of outbreaks do not always occur at the field, each subsequent handler of the product will have a different traceability story to tell and will need to quickly access that data to find the true origin of the problem.

However, simply using these standards is not enough. The information that will need to be shown on cases of produce will cease to be available once they leave each handler's warehouse or once a case is opened, the contents removed and the case discarded. As such, each handler of the product must read and store this information, in compliance with the one-step-up, one-step-down provision of the Bioterrorism Act. If a recall becomes necessary, members of the supply chain can then quickly access data to isolate where the product is and where it came from.

The aim of the Produce Traceability Initiative sponsored by the Produce Marketing Association, Canadian Produce Marketing Association and United Fresh Produce Association is to create an action plan that will move the industry into incorporating the necessary standards to ensure we have whole chain traceability, vs. just our own internal traceability program.

Gary Fleming is vice president of industry technology & standards for the Produce Marketing Association, Newark, Del. Gary has spent the majority of his career in the packaged goods industry working with standards organizations, members of the supply chain and the vendor community leading/facilitating industrywide supply chain initiatives.