The idea behind track-and-trace where produce is concerned is that the response to suspected recall events can be greatly accelerated if on-package product information follows the produce throughout the supply chain.
At present, most companies have “internal” traceability programs, but have to expand to “external” traceability programs to include the consumer. It contains both internal and external traceability programs, needed in order to effectively track and trace products up and down the supply chain, achieving whole-chain traceability. This Initiative is an industry-led effort to enhance traceability throughout the entire produce supply chain. During the past couple of years, the Produce Marketing Association, Canadian Produce Marketing Association, and the United Fresh Produce Association have been developing and promoting the Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI). Efficient, rapid recall systems can minimize the negative economic impact of such events by quickly targeting the specific, suspected lot, and also serve to boost consumer confidence in the ability of the produce industry to respond to crises and protect consumers from potential harm.įew markets have been more active in adopting this solution than fresh produce, where product recalls have been numerous lately. Also, retailers can prevent consumers from carrying through with a purchase of produce from a lot that has been identified as potentially unsafe.
This allows shippers and other handlers to promptly remove the suspect items from the distribution system. For produce, one of the most important uses of traceability is to locate a lot of fruits and/or vegetables in the event of a food safety recall incident. Jeff Brecht (Professor at the University of Florida/Institute of Food & Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS), refers to the ability to locate an item at any time within the supply chain, as well as to call up a history of where that item originated and where it has been. One of the brand-protection technologies is the track-and-trace technology. Consequently, brands, whether they like it or not, have to be the authoritative source of information about their products … or someone else will be.
#ITRACE TECHNOLOGY FULL#
Apparently the prevailing wisdom among many food executives is that sharing information with consumers is a waste as they are supposed to not understand it.Ĭontrary to this prevailing wisdom, the consumer has full access to unimaginable amounts of information at his fingertips through existent and future devices such as the internet and mobiles which read barcodes and other matrixes. However what’s amazing is that many of the executives, surveyed in a Colman-Brohan-Davis report, still question the near-term value of deploying information to fully empower consumer decision-making. This leads to brand-protection technologies. Brand identity with additional product information would be a good thing.
Which is the brand of tomatoes that can be trusted to be safe? Where is the information that tells consumers from where the produce is originated. In spite of the millions of dollars growers and processors have invested in state-of-the-art clean facilities and HACCP practices – consumers are facing recalls, and left in the dark in terms of information. Panic leapt from one produce category to another with every new announcement, as neither the FDA nor the industry were able to come up with the source of the disaster.īut tell me, what exactly was the problem? Still, there is no answer, but even without the answer, what is this dreadful debacle teaching us? And while consumers stayed away from potentially ‘killer tomatoes’, the industry lost a lot of money. Tomatoes were said to be the culprit, were pointed at, and took the blame, although they (probably) never made anyone sick. The last year consumers have been facing large produce safety recall incidents (salmonella and E.coli).
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