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.
This traceability is not only important to providers to help prepare, respond, and recover from food safety issues, but is important to consumers for confidence in the food and beverage products that they provide to their families.
To put it another way: while the food may no longer come from the farmer down the lane, we still want to know where our food comes from and how it was produced.
Safety Front and Center in Traceability
The importance in traceability when it comes to food safety and security was evident just over a year ago when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was confronted with another outbreak involving E.coli 0157:H7, a dangerous bacteria that can lead to severe sickness, even kidney failure and death.
Utilizing traceability, the FDA was able to track the outbreak back to romaine lettuce harvested in Salinas, California.
“Through DNA-fingerprinting, we have been able to associate this outbreak with past outbreaks,” said FDA Deputy Commissioner for Food Policy and Response Frank Yiannas. “The lessons we have learned from previous romaine-linked outbreaks and the adoption of labeling and traceability best practices by many in the industry have facilitated our traceback efforts and helped us target our advice to a defined harvest region.”
In other words, without traceability the FDA would not have been able to warn the U.S. public of the health issues and would have still been consuming the bad product.
Yiannas went on to emphasize that traceability throughout the supply chain was key to food safety: “Producers must continue to review their practices and all segments of the supply chain must improve traceability to enhance food safety. The FDA remains committed to improving the safety of leafy greens and traceability from farm to fork.”
Traceability on the Frontlines of Food Defense
Traceability’s role in reacting to a public health issue is top priority as outbreaks, while rare, can be deadly. Since the 1993 Jack in the Box E.coli outbreak which killed four children and left 178 others with permanent injuries including kidney and brain damage, both the public and the food and beverage industry have been focused on the consequences of dangerous outbreaks.
While traceability is central to quickly identifying and rectifying a food safety issue, it also can help businesses recover from issues and ultimately help prevent future events.
Food Safety magazine breaks the benefits of traceability in food defense to four phases:
- Preparedness: When all the dots in the supply chain are connected, providers are prepared when a food safety issue arises.
- Response: Time can save lives in an outbreak and traceability improves the response time of all the stakeholders in the supply chain.
- Recovery: Consumers can have confidence after a food safety issue with the transparency that traceability provides to the entire food supply chain.
- Prevention: When traceability can identify the root cause of a food safety issue then measures can be taken to prevent repeat episodes.
William Fisher, executive director of the Global Food Traceability Center, wrote in Food safety magazine: “While food safety problems remain rare, when they do occur, time is the enemy as public health and lives are at stake, as well as livelihoods of industries, companies and employees.”
Traceability also bolsters food defense by identifying fraud and culling counterfeit products from the food supply chain.
The Public Appetite Grows for Traceability
Traceability is not only about public confidence in products regarding food safety, but the U.S. public is increasingly demanding to know where their food came from and in what conditions it was raised, grown, or produced.
Some of the public’s interest in transparency is driven by specific diet concerns, food allergies or medical conditions with The NPD Group estimating that “a quarter of U.S. adults are trying to
manage a health or medical condition by making healthy food and beverage choices.”
Others want to make decisions on other emerging issues such as:
- Identifying organic products.
- Consuming humanely raised beef and poultry.
- Purchasing products by businesses that treat their workers ethically.
- Patronizing products that are sustainable and eco-friendly.
Signal Theory’s 2020 white paper “Shifting Consumer Behaviors” found that 42 percent reported that they are “attempting to learn about where their food comes from and how it is made more in the past five years.”
These trends will continue as they are being driven by younger generations with Impossible Foods’ 2019 survey finding that 62 percent of Gen-Z’s, the newest generation, are willing to spend more money on sustainable food options.
FreshByte Software offers total Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI) capabilities to help providers meet and exceed government regulations. Contact us today to see how our software can help preserve your products unique identity and traceability.
