FoodTrace online traceability offers the food industry a specialist traceability solutions
Traceability of raw materials used in the manufacture and processing of food products is increasing becoming a requirement of doing business rather than management nice to have. Foods scares, such as the BSE crisis and the Foot and Mouth epidemic have raised awareness as have issues related to being able to trace the use of Genetically Modified produce.
There are also significant commercial benefits to be gained from being able to demonstrate the “providence” of a food product, such as higher pricing and better consumer demand for example, provided the manufacturer can say which ingredients, from which batch, from which supplier were used to produce the goods provided to which customer.
Food Trace is a “European Commission Concerted Action Project” with the objective of “delivering a generic framework that ensures the smooth and efficient transfer of information through every stage of the food chain, with the ability to plan, model, validate and implement”. For traceability to work, all those involved in the food supply chain, from the farmer to the transportation companies through to processors and manufactures to the retailer, need to cooperate.
What is the legislation? The key pieces of legislation that concern this area are the EU Food Regulation 2005 and EC Directive 89/396/EEC
To avoid being swamped in the data mountain that tracing each individual ingredient would cause, it is being suggested that each ingredient is placed in a risk group, such as high for meat products, medium for milk derivatives and low for sugar etc.
Traceability is not negotiable. It is a Mandatory requirement throughout the supply chain. The design is optional (paper, electronic, bar code etc.), but functionality must be demonstrable. No one piece of software or one single technology will provide a magic solution. Even if one supplier is providing a “turn-key” solution they will need to use partners. In various areas of life people talk about “Joined-up thinking”, where in any sphere of human endeavour those involved in each step of a process need to consider the needs to those before and after them. This is particularly true in this area of food traceability various suppliers to the food industry and the industry itself need to work together resulting in collaboration and cooperation.
“Use By” dates are not enough. The large majority of food and beverage products the current traceability is dependent upon the Use By or Best Before End date printed on each product. However this information is not always unique and not always accurate. Typically, for food producers, product life is determined by the date of the manufacturing process, for example the cook date, mix date or kill date. In some circumstances the process date and packaging date can vary. It is also common to produce the same product on multiple production lines, or in multiple batches throughout the day, such as to ‘top up’ volumes based on orders received. It is therefore possible for multiple batches to have the same Use By information.
Furthermore, the large majority of coding and labelling is currently configured manually; the line operative will type in to the printer the information required. Human error is inevitable and coding or packaging errors are all too common. Quality Assurance procedures may detect these issues prior to shipment but manufacturing and packaging traceability has already been lost at this point. In extreme case emergency product withdrawals (EPWs) or product recalls are required.
Providing good traceability means providing some piece of information such as a batch code that can provide the means to identify a product. The manufacturer can then store the information about what was used to produce that product and where necessary share this information with the next person in the supply chain using the internet such as through Traceall’s smart web interface for example. As long as each item can be identified to a batch then the data for that batch does not need to travel with the item.
For more information contact one of Traceall’s traceability experts.
