Forensic Files

MICHAEL GARRY

Can retailers trace any tainted food product back in the supply chain to determine where and when its integrity was compromised? In these days of frequent product recalls, that has become an increasingly pertinent question.

So SN asked the question in its latest industry survey on technology practices and priorities, conducted last fall. Less than half (46%) of survey respondents said their company had that traceback capability, while another 20% said this capability was under consideration. (See the 14th annual State of the Industry Report on Supermarket Technology, SN, Jan. 28, Page 55.)

Of course, retailers are not the only members of the supply chain that need to be able to trace the path of tainted products. Indeed, every company in the loop has that responsibility, starting with the grower, packer and manufacturer and moving up the line to the distributor, the wholesaler and finally the retailer.

But, as the SN survey suggests, the industry is far less prepared than what might be considered necessary to address the growing number of recalls, as well as the rising concerns of consumers about food safety.

While many individual retailers and suppliers have taken steps to improve their ability to track and trace products — especially in the wake of the Bioterrorism Act of 2002, which requires companies to track products one step back and one step forward in the supply chain — the industry still lacks the kind of uniform and comprehensive traceability program that would allow companies to rapidly and reliably zero in on both the source and the destination of contaminated products. There has been lots of talk and little action.

But efforts are under way in 2008 to bring more uniformity to the tracing process — at least for fresh produce, which suffered huge losses from the great spinach scare of 2006. Under the sponsorship of the Produce Marketing Association, the Canadian Produce Marketing Association and the United Fresh Produce Association, about 50 companies, including major food retailers, foodservice entities and produce growers, have launched the Produce Traceability Initiative, aimed at driving broad adoption of traceability standards and practices throughout the produce supply chain. Eight trade associations, including the Food Marketing Institute, are involved.

Companies participating in the Produce Traceability Initiative include Wal-Mart Stores, Kroger, Food Lion, Wegmans Food Markets, Sysco, U.S. Foodservice, C.H. Robinson, Maturipe and Tanimura & Antle. Initiative members have held two meetings in Atlanta so far this year, with a third meeting slated to take place on April 11 in Boston. “We expect to get this done in the next two or three meetings,” said Gary Fleming, vice president, industry technology and standards, at PMA, Newark, Del.

What makes the Produce Traceability Initiative different from the individual traceability efforts that companies have made is that the initiative is attempting to get as many companies as possible to adopt the same traceability standard. “We're saying there are minimum common data elements needed for tracing back and forward,” said Fleming.

These common data elements will make possible what Fleming calls “external traceability,” providing standard links between each member of the supply chain. That is in contrast to “internal traceability” systems that help a company identify products within its enterprise.

Internal traceability systems marketed by a slew of vendors don't necessarily meet the industry's need for a comprehensive system that extends to all parts of the supply chain, said Fleming. “A lot of vendors claim they have a great traceability system. And they do, provided that everyone uses it.”

In addition, he said, unless information is put on cases, and unless all players read and store that information, “you don't have [farm-to-store] traceability.”

On the other hand, internal traceability systems enable retailers and manufacturers to collect information related to product safety and other internal business practices. For example, details at a warehouse — such as the temperature conditions under which a product was stored — can be critical in a recall and may be needed in the event of an FDA investigation.

It is actually the combination of external and internal traceability systems that results in what Fleming called “whole-chain traceability.”

GS1 STANDARDS

The standards being promoted in the Produce Traceability Initiative are based on well-known industry technologies and practices developed by GS1, Brussels, the international body responsible for bar codes and other commercial standards. They boil down to five key practices, or milestones: developing a brand owner's company prefix; assigning a global trade identification number (GTIN) to each case of product; showing the GTIN, lot number and pack or harvest date on each case; encoding this data in a bar code for each case; and reading and storing the information on the bar code at each step of the supply chain.

“That's the information needed to isolate where a product is in the industry and get it out of the DCs and stores as soon as possible,” said Fleming.

The first four practices are largely the responsibility of the product supplier (or the retailer in the case of private label), while the last is the responsibility of every company in the supply chain, up to and including the retailer.

“Reading and storing this data will be a big job for retailers,” said Fleming. “The cost will be equal to or greater than the cost incurred by manufacturers.”

The task for retailers will include adding processes and technology at refrigerated warehouses that did not previously exist. “It won't all happen in a year,” Fleming added.

The initiative's focus initially is on tracking cases. But companies in the initiative have agreed to take the same approach to tracking items once the GS1 DataBar bar code is widely applied to individual produce items.

While there is broad acknowledgment by participants in the initiative that “we have to do this,” the question that remains is “how fast it will happen,” noted Fleming. “It depends on what the buyers commit to. Then the suppliers will be willing to move.”

Thus, the April meeting of the Produce Traceability Initiative will focus on establishing a time line for implementing the five milestones. “[Retail and foodservice] buyers are discussing what [time line] they are willing to commit to,” said Fleming. “That will be a large part of the conversation on April 11.” Buyers and sellers of produce will also make a “public declaration of support” for the time lines “so they have some teeth,” said Fleming.

Even after the major retailers and suppliers commit to a time line for adopting traceability standards, it will still be necessary to address companies that are not on board. “It would be unfortunate if the whole project was shattered by one recall involving a retailer or supplier that did not incorporate these practices, and it makes national news,” said Fleming. “Then the whole industry is implicated.”

Fleming expects other fresh food sectors to follow the produce industry's lead on traceability, based on work he does with those sectors. “Produce is in harmony with what all of the fresh food associations say needs to be done,” he said. “The meat, dairy, deli and chicken groups are all engaged in this.”

FMI, Arlington, Va., takes the position that each commodity group “has to develop a traceability system that works best for its supply chain,” said Bill Greer, director of communications.

Fleming envisions the standard traceability data also being used for other applications, including ordering, invoicing, inventory control, electronic commerce and data synchronization, though his main focus remains “solving the traceability problem.”

ACTIVITY ABROAD

In the packaged goods arena, GTINs and bar codes are already commonplace at the case and item level, but the level of compliance to GS1 traceability standards across the supply chain is uneven.

“Manufacturers do a better job [with traceability] than retailers, but overall, not a high percentage of companies do it well,” said Tom Kozenski, vice president, product strategy, at RedPrairie, of Waukesha, Wis., which markets traceability and other supply chain systems. “There's a wide-open opportunity to improve this.”

RedPrairie is one of many vendors offering traceability technology that Fleming would describe as applying to internal traceability, though in many cases the systems are capable of reaching beyond a particular company's enterprise and interfacing with other players in the supply chain.

For example, RedPrairie offers a centralized database that takes in information from all points in the supply chain. The system then offers visibility of products and the ability to put a hold on products anywhere in distribution, including telling the POS in stores not to accept scans of held or recalled products at the checkout. The database could reside at a manufacturer or a retailer, although manufacturers more commonly use it, said Kozenski.

In a survey RedPrairie did last year, 63% of manufacturers said they would like recall technology linked to POS interfaces at stores, helping to bridge the recall communications gap between manufacturers and retailers.

Much of the adoption of traceability technology to date has taken place outside the U.S., such as in Europe, where the European Union has set traceability guidelines, and in South America, where parts of Argentina have fostered joint government-industry traceability standards.

FQcode, which has U.S. offices in Miami, markets a comprehensive produce traceability system that has been used by fruit growers and packers in Argentina.

Under the system, “every act of handling, transportation and processing requires a case to get a new ID, which can be tracked back to an old ID and back to where the fruit was grown,” said Martin Kupferman, director of business development, North America.

“It's not enough to just go to the lot number,” he said. “What if the problem was on the packing line? You need to know who packed it. The industry has to come to grips with what traceability really means.”

At PMA's Fresh Summit last October, Robert Perg, systems manager, Expofrut S.A., a major fresh fruit packer in Argentina, explained how his company uses the FQcode system. As part of the process, he said, the bar code on each case “has information on not only where the product came from, but when it was packed and by whom it was packed.”

Aldata, with U.S. offices in Atlanta, has developed a traceability system that incorporates RFID technology. Bruce Bowen, vice president at the company, pointed out that U.S. retailers have been slower than their European counterparts to adopt traceability.

The Bioterrorism Act's tracking stipulations “have no teeth,” Bowen said. “Retailers may capture lot numbers at the distribution center, but nobody tracks lot numbers to stores.” Better traceability practices would help to “narrow the scope” of recalls when they take place, he noted.

Migros, of Zurich, Switzerland, the largest food retailer in that country, uses the Aldata traceability system to track fish from its arrival in warehouses to distribution to stores. “An RFID tag is directly inserted into a [shipping crate], and it contains the [item] number, name, origin, and information about the supplier and date [of arrival],” said Thierry Kensicher, Migros' logistics manager.

Lawson Software, St. Paul, Minn., provides a trace engine that it discussed last week at its user conference in Las Vegas.

The trace engine is a “data warehouse for traceability data,” said Patrik Sjoberg, who is in application product management for Lawson. “It pulls information from various sources like ERPs [enterprise resource planning systems] and inspection systems into a core database. You can trace a product from raw materials to warehouse movements.”

Lawson's system is used today by manufacturers, though it could also be employed by retailers. Retailers can access traceability data in the manufacturer's system via a portal.