PTI Won’t Meet Outbound Target in ’12

LAS VEGAS — While the four-year-old Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI) has made significant progress towards achieving its seven milestones, the final one – read and store information on outbound cases – is not likely to be reached this year as originally intended.

“The chances of having whole-chain traceability in 2012 are not real strong, but everyone’s pushing towards it,” said Dan Vache, vice president, supply chain management, United Fresh Produce Association, one of the sponsors and administrators of the PTI, along with the Produce Marketing Association, the Canadian Produce Marketing Association and GS1 US. Vache spoke about the PTI at the GS1 Connect conference here this month.

The PTI began in 2008 as a voluntary initiative to achieve supply chain-wide adoption of electronic traceability of every case of produce by the end of 2012.

Vache identified reading and storing bar-coded information on outbound cases headed to stores from retailers’ and wholesalers’ distribution centers as “one of the weak points we’ve had.” The reason is that many distributors “are so concerned about losing efficiencies” during the picking of cases for store orders, particularly orders picked via voice selection rather than scanning of bar codes, he noted.

To assist retailers with the voice-picking hurdle, the PTI updated its labeling requirements to include a four-digit “voice pick code,” which would eliminate the need to scan outbound cases in operations that employ a voice-directed picking system. The voice pick code, developed by YottaMark, would be generated on a calculator available at www.producetraceability.org/resources/voicecode. Tests of the system are being conducted, said Vache.

Meanwhile, Vache said he expected some major retailers, such as Wal-Mart Stores, Kroger and Safeway, to meet the final milestone this year. “They’re working diligently on it,” he said

Those three retailers volunteer for the PTI, as do Associated Wholesale Grocers, Food Lion, Publix, Supervalu, Wakefern and Whole Foods.

In May, the PTI’s Leadership Council released the results of a survey of 228 companies reporting on progress toward PTI goals. About 84% of suppliers said they are communicating GTINs (global trade item numbers) to receivers (retailers and wholesalers), while 77% of brand owners said they have assigned GTINs to some or all of their produce cases.

In addition, 88% of receivers reported they are receiving cases with incoming GTINs; 75% said they are reading or planning to read data on some or all inbound cases; 43% are totally or partially equipped for reading inbound data; and 40% are storing all or some of the data on inbound cases. But the compliance of retailers with reading and storing information on outbound cases was not reported.

Some retailers are delaying investments in PTI compliance because they fear that the Food and Drug Administration, pursuant to the Food Safety Modernization Act, will eventually issue traceability regulations not in accord with the PTI. However, Vache said “we’re fairly confident” that the FDA will not be in opposition to the PTI. Michael Taylor, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods, “looked me right in the eye and said, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing. You know your business better than anyone else.’”