PTI Members on Track With Traceability Goals

NEW ORLEANS — Seventy-nine percent of the Produce Traceability Initiative's member companies are on course to meet the group's produce traceability goals by 2012, according to a recent survey administered by the group.

PTI members include produce retailers, wholesalers, brokers, foodservice companies, growers, packers and shippers. The group aims to implement electronic traceability standards for the entire produce supply chain by 2012.

PTI's upcoming milestone goals for 2011 include showing human-readable information on cases; encoding information in a barcode; and reading and storing information on inbound cases.

At its a meeting here this month, held during the United Fresh Produce Association's annual convention and expo, the Produce Traceability Initiative's Leadership Council shared the progress on its 18 traceability pilot programs that are intended to give the group a better idea of costs, time and best practices for the PTI project.

“The strong seller and buyer participation in the pilot projects reinforces the commitment to advancing PTI in our industry,” said Cathy Green Burns, president of Food Lion and leadership council chair, according to a PTI statement. “We look forward to sharing the results of the pilots in the near future, and to continuing to provide valuable information to the industry in support of PTI implementation.”

The PTI website, www.producetraceability.org, now contains updated best practices documents for case and hybrid pallet labeling, and will have an applet for generating voice-pick codes.

Approved January 2011, the Food Safety Modernization Act contains food traceability requirements that have yet to be implemented by the Food and Drug Administration. Michael Taylor, FDA deputy commissioner for foods, spoke to the council by phone about the agency cooperating with PTI.

“We are keenly aware that industry has been at the forefront of understanding traceability, and in order to make progress we know we are going to need to build on and embrace the work that industry has done,” Taylor stated, according to the release.

When told that some industry members have been delaying their implementation of PTI until FDA regulations are finalized, Taylor said, “when real progress is being made, we encourage that, and we don't want our process to be an obstacle.”

Doug Grant of The Oppenheimer Group, who was approved as the council's new co-chair, expressed optimism about the initiative's recent progress.

“We've clearly got a lot of momentum,” he said. “We're gaining speed with new best practices, pilot projects and other working group efforts getting underway now. And we're very cognizant of the importance of having an effective solution that keeps costs and complexity to a minimum.”

The Canadian Produce Marketing Association, GS1 US, the Produce Marketing Association and the United Fresh Produce Association sponsor the Produce Traceability Initiative.