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Technology is changing the entire world around us, and food is not excluded. Technology is allowing consumers and suppliers to better track and trace the exact origins of every ingredient that goes into any type of product that they are manufacturing or purchasing.

Traceability has many benefits associated with it, and may soon affect the way consumers purchase products and what they eat. Here are just a few of the key ways that traceability may soon impact consumers. 

For almost 20 years now in the United States grocery store consumers have been able to identify which country many of the commodities in their shopping cart come from thanks to a "cool" idea – specifically the Country of Origin Label (COOL) legislation.

The labeling law requires certain retailers, mostly grocery stores and supermarkets, to identify the country of origin of certain foods such as perishable agricultural commodities (fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables), peanuts, pecans, ginseng, macadamia nuts, wild and farm-raised fish and shellfish, and muscle cuts and ground chicken, goat, and lamb.

Calculating the true costs of the food we consume is a bit more complicated than simply adding up all our grocery bills and dining receipts. “We pay for food in many ways, not just at the checkout,” writes the Sustainable Food Trust, the global voice for sustainable food and health.

A true cost accounting in the food industry has to take into account how the food is produced and how its consumption contributes to our healthy (or not so healthy) diet.

The industry-led Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI) is boosting consumer confidence and food safety by working to achieve standardized, electronic track and trace procedures across the supply chain.

A voluntary, industry-wide effort started more than a decade ago, PTI seeks to maximize the effectiveness of traceability procedures, while enhancing the speed and efficiency of track and trace systems for the future.

In an ideal world all our meals might be farm-to-table, consuming food like Americans did 200 years ago when 90 percent of the population lived on farms and produced their own food to eat. The reality, however, is that most of the food on our fork today is the product of an increasingly complex global food supply chain tasked with feeding the planet’s 7.8 billion people.

To ensure safety, security and sustainability in this complex situation, the food and beverage industry relies on traceability to follow the path food takes from the field or farm to our tables, connecting the dots every step along the way.

Americans walking down their grocery aisle can select from a diverse abundance of low-cost foods to put in their carts so why would we worry about the sustainability of the U.S. Food System? After all, Americans spend less of their disposable income on food than any other country in the world, spending just 9.5 percent in 2019, according to the USDA, down from 17 percent in 1960.

The price at the checkout scanner, however, does not reflect the true economic, social, and environmental costs which impact the sustainability of the U.S. food system. To glean this true cost, we must understand agriculture production and consumption patterns.

The public has its third and final chance on Dec. 2, 2020 to comment on a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed rule to establish additional traceability recordkeeping requirements for certain foods. The virtual one-day meeting from 11:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. EST follows similar meetings on Nov. 6 and Nov. 18. Registration is required to attend the meeting and space is limited.

Almost a decade in the making the FDA’s “Food Traceability Proposed Rule” was published on Sept. 23, 2020. The rule is mandated by Sec. 204(d) of the Food Safety and Modernization Act (FSMA) passed by Congress in 2011.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are currently investigating three E. coli O157:H7 outbreaks that have sickened more than 50 across 15 states, including one death in Michigan.

Here at FreshByte, we offer comprehensive distribution solutions geared towards helping enterprises of all sizes benefit from streamlined business model from inception and creation to distribution and rapid inventory control and beyond. Our purchasing software makes it easy keep track of customer’s preferences, manage orders, financial statements and much more on your end.

However, growth in technology has changed the way the B2B and B2C worlds work. That is why we are also staying innovative with our software solutions. We strive to allow you to do business the way you want, when you want and from wherever you want.

When it comes to bad weather, most people think about the damage it can cause to homes and the personal lives of the people affected. But there's much more to an extreme weather event than that. Weather that causes chaos and disruption for individuals can cause the same types of problems for businesses and supply chains. That means that inventory and distribution issues can quickly start to appear, and the people and companies that need to get items to and from locations may start to see a breakdown of those items' ability to travel.