Summary of Traceability
Traceability is a tool that can be used to provide important information that can be used to build trust between a consumer and the producer of food. Tracing is especially useful to detect the cause of quality problems. Most of the time traceability is associated with the follow up of serious incidents. It can also be used to find back production and packaging problems, such as labels that are wrongly placed, errors in coupons or price indication, taste problems in a specific batch. Traceability is increasingly being used to guarantee certain food attributes such as organic or fair trade production and processing.
ISO (International Organization for Standardization), which develops voluntary international standards for products and services, defines traceability as the “ability to trace the history, application, or location of that which is under consideration.” This definition is quite broad.
The definition of traceability is necessarily broad because food is a complex product and traceability is a tool for achieving a number of different objectives. As a result, no traceability system is complete. A system for tracking every input and process to satisfy every objective would be enormous and very costly. Consequently, firms have developed varying amounts and kinds of traceability. Firms determine the necessary breadth, depth, and precision of their traceability systems depending on characteristics of their production process and their traceability objectives.
Breadth describes the amount of information collected. A recordkeeping system cataloging all of a food’s attributes would be enormous, unnecessary, and expensive, few, if any, producers or consumers would be interested in all the information. The breadth of most traceability systems would exclude some of the food’s attributes.
Depth is how far back or forward the system tracks the relevant information. For food safety, the depth of the traceability system depends on where hazards and remedies can enter the food production chain. For some health hazards, such as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow disease), ensuring food safety requires establishing safety measures at the farm. For other health hazards, such as foodborne pathogens, firms may need to establish a number of critical control points along the entire production and distribution chain.
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Precision reflects the degree of assurance with which the tracing system can pinpoint a particular food product’s movement or characteristics. In some cases, the objectives of the system will dictate a precise system, while for other objectives a less precise system will suffice.
Traceability systems also help firms isolate the source and extent of safety or quality control problems. This helps reduce the production and distribution of unsafe or poor-quality products, which in turn reduces the potential for bad publicity, liability, and recalls. The better and more precise the tracing system, the faster a producer can identify and resolve food safety or quality problems. Many buyers, including many restaurants and some grocery stores, now require their suppliers to establish traceability systems and to verify, often through third-party certification, that such systems work.
Increasingly, the food industry is tailoring goods and services to the tastes and preferences of various groups of consumers. Some innovations involve credence attributes, characteristics that consumers cannot discern even after consuming the product. Credence attributes can describe content or process characteristics of the product. Other innovations involve Content attributes which affect the physical properties of a product. Finally, Process attributes do not affect final product content but refer to characteristics of the production process. Since, in general, credence, content and process attributes are all difficult for consumers to discern, traceability is an indispensable part of any market for process credence attributes—or content attributes that are difficult or costly to measure. The only way to verify the existence of these attributes is through recordkeeping that establishes their creation and preservation.
Origins of Food Traceability
Traceability systems emerged in the mid-1930s in Europe as a way to demand and by public sector action to improve food safety assurance. Capitalizing on the attention to this issue, food marketing strategies have arisen to use traceability systems to support branding. Such strategies prove authentic origin of high-value food, such as French champagne. In recent years, such systems have also been called for by increased consumer can be seen in recent labeling trends, such as organic, fair trade, or low carbon production. As suppliers, buyers, consumers, and governments all respond to the incentives to create food traceability systems, global standards and new technologies are being developed to support efficient and consistent traceability.
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Evolution of Food TraceabilityCommonly used Food Traceability Standards (by Region)
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) issued a new standard in 2007, known as “ISO 22005:2007”, which establishes international standards for traceability in the food and feed sectors, complementary to ISO 22000:2005, which outlines requirements for food safety management systems, based on Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) principles.
Some governmental regulations are stricter than WTO minimum requirements. The General Food Law contained in Regulation (EC) No 178/2002, as issued by the European Parliament and the Council, mandates the implementation of traceability systems in all food and feed business operators in Article 18, which has been effective since 1 January 2005.
Japanese Agricultural Standards are established by the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. Japanese law requires a full traceability system for domestic beef. A new bill was recently approved that requires traceability records for rice and rice products, record-keeping will become mandatory in late 2010. For other foods, Article 3 of Japan's Food Sanitation Law requests that each operator keep records to identify all their suppliers and customers—a “one-step-back” and “one-step-forward” record. This request is similar to Article 18 of the European Union's EC Regulation 178/2002. However, in Japan this type of record keeping is only recommended and is not compulsory. Japanese regulations do require labeling of the place of origin for fresh food and minimally processed food, not only at retail level but also at wholesale level. However, while origin labeling itself is required, a record-keeping system to verify origin area by providing documentation such as delivery slips and/or invoices is only recommended, not legally required, per Article 3 of the Food Sanitation Law.
Under the Bioterrorism Act of 2002, local and foreign food businesses that produce food products for sale in the United States must be registered with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Importers and processors are required to keep records of their immediate suppliers and buyers for 2 years after transaction, and must be able to reproduce these records upon request for inspection by the FDA. In 2007, the FDA issued the Food Protection Plan (FPP), which functions to improve food safety and defense for all domestic and imported products in the United States
In 2003, Agriculture and Agri-Foods Canada consulted with federal, provincial and territorial governments, where a consensus “that traceability is necessary in a safe food supply” was established; this was incorporated into the Agricultural Policy Framework (APF), a national agricultural initiative, which expires on March 31st, 2009. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) requires food operators to document the names and addresses of their suppliers and customers, as well as the nature of the product and date of delivery. Operators are also encouraged to keep information on the volume or quantity of a product, the batch number and more detailed descriptions of the product, such as whether it is raw or processed. In the event of a recall, producers must be able to provide this information to the CFIA.
A buyer might also require their supplier to become certified as compliant with an open standard. In this case, suppliers are certified by and then subject to audit by the appropriate certification body. Open standards with traceability requirements include the British Retail Consortium Global Standard, International Food Standard, Safe Quality Food 2000 Code, GlobalGAP General Regulations, and ISO 22000:2005.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/amberwaves/april04/features/FoodTraceability.htm
http://ec.europa.eu/food/food/foodlaw/traceability/index_en.htm
http://www.agrosoft.gr/foodchaintraceabilityintro_eng.htm http://www.adbi.org/working-pper/2009/05/28/3012.ict.food.traceability.system/the.evolution.of.traceability.systems/
http://www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/foodsafety/traceability/cfs07s01.html
