Transparency In Fresh Foods Boosts Consumer Trust

By Melissa Lind, contributing writer

One of the biggest areas of concern in traceability is the fresh food sector. Fresh food producers have a ready-made market and easily sell goods to consumers who want non-GMO, local, sustainable food. Until recently, it was difficult for a produce or meat supplier to provide adequate information in a tech-savvy world

In the past, a simple sign written by a food seller with a marker indicating to a potential consumer what a product is and contains was validation enough. However, today’s consumers want more. Contemporary consumers want information along with actual verification. This notion, along with increasingly-strict regulations, goes passed the packaged-foods sector and into fresh foods.

This presents a challenge to traceability. Many companies track and trace products with radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips. But, fresh vegetables and meat products don’t have the ability to be tagged with an RFID chip like a packaged product would. Additionally, oftentimes fruit, vegetable, meat, and poultry products come from a farm, but don’t receive a label until processed at a plant. This inherently makes the idea of “complete” visibility and transparency impossible and, subsequently, leaves the consumer with limited knowledge.

Labelling At The Source
Fortunately, consumer demand is forcing innovation. Technology is advancing at light-speed and the food industry is no exception. Some of today’s farmers are gaining access to mobile-data platforms with portable printers — right in the field.

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Food can be harvested with producers creating, printing, and labelling right as the produce is picked. With the same label following the same carton all the way to the end consumer. The consumer can then use a mobile app on a smartphone to actually scan the label in the store. This labeling allows the consumer access to a complete genealogy including: where the product came from, how it was grown, when it was harvested , and even if it has been subject to a recall. This is especially good news for small, fresh-food producers who often find their market closer to the consumer, at a specialty store, a restaurant, or even a farmer’s market.

Today’s consumer is all about local sourcing and sustainable practices, but they also want safety and regulations demand it. Now fresh food suppliers can offer both, no matter how small or difficult.

Technology Platforms
In addition to pick-side labeling, a number of tech applications have been developed that increase the fresh food manufacturers’ ability to provide and manage traceability data — some of which can be accessed by the consumer. By partnering with one of the following new programs, fresh food suppliers can offer greater visibility and transparency to the consumer:

• Edible Software — offers inventory-control and traceability software designed for meat, poultry, seafood, and baked goods. The company also offers accounting and other business tools, including regulatory compliance aids.
• FoodLink — this is an integrated field-to-buyer solution that ties into wholesale and retail buying processes. A Smartphone tool uses scannable codes on individual units that can provide product genealogy to intermediaries or to the consumer. FoodLink recently merged with iTradeNetwork which integrated additional solutions into the mix, such as warehouse-management and food-safety solutions.
• HarvestMark — this is a free consumer app that allows users to scan produce with the HarvestMark logo to provide information about the fruit, vegetable, or meat product. The app is used by more than 400 companies and 3,000 farms in multiple countries.
• Real Time Farms — this is a crowd-sourcing site which offers a web-based platform for users to enter a zip code and find out more about the food originating in that area. Users can also share information, such as pictures and other information about the local farms, with other members and registration is free.

Learn how traceability software is connecting the food-safety dots

Other players are also entering the market for tracking and tracking fresh foods. As the consumer becomes even-more discerning with global, sustainability issues, the availability of information to the end user can only grow.