Blog Articles

Flowers have been a go-to gift on Mother’s Day for more than 100 years, but beautiful bouquets from local florists in 2022 could be in short supply due to supply chain woes, labor shortages and inflation.

When it comes to “Food Fiascos” you need to start with the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) where lax sanitary conditions and unethical actions led to a 2008-09 salmonella outbreak that not only led to illness and death but bankrupted a $25 million company in months and sent its CEO to prison for 28 years in the stiffest penalty ever in a food-borne illness case.

In a final report issued in April 2009, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that a strain of Salmonella serotype Typhimurium, linked to peanut butter sourced back to PCA processing plants, had sickened 714 people across 46 states with nine deaths reported.

A decade ago, the U.S. Grocery Manufacturers Association estimated that food fraud cost the global food industry between $10 and $15 billion per year and the problem has only accelerated since then.

“Fraud drains an estimated $30 to $40 billion every year from the global food industry. The Consumer Brands Association claims that roughly 10 percent of commercially produced food and beverage products are affected by fraud,” wrote TraceGains content marketing specialist Denis Storey in 2020. “But these figures only point to the initial economic cost of food fraud. There are the health costs to consumers poisoned by tainted food, not to mention the cost of the reputation hit on a brand when adulteration occurs.”

The Produce Marketing Association (PMA), the trade organization representing companies from every segment of the global fresh produce and floral supply chain, argues that artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the way our food is produced.

“Advancements such as machine learning, image recognition, and predictive modeling are being used in food production to boost productivity and efficiency,” writes Vonnie Estes, PMA Vice President Technology.

Wholesale seafood vendors are under immense pressure during the COVID-19 pandemic as they find themselves in a marketplace driven by product shortages and pent-up demand.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) says it will issue new rules on labeling so that “domestic farmers and ranchers do not have to compete with foreign companies that mislead consumers”.

The top-to-bottom review of the “Product of USA” meat labeling term announced on July 1 is part of USDA’s effort to level the playing field for independent family farmers and ranchers.

The USDA “Product of USA” meat labeling announcement came on the same day that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) finalized a new rule to deter rampant “Made in USA” fraud.

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.

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.