What Does The Ideal Food-Safety Recordkeeping System Entail?

By Melissa Lind, contributing writer

As food producers face ever-increasing requirements regarding food safety, digital recordkeeping has become less of a luxury and more of a necessity. Advances of technology in information-management systems are easing the burden of documentation. Mobile devices and cloud computing are becoming commonplace, what does a perfect, digital recordkeeping system look like?

The world of recordkeeping and data management in the food industry isn’t perfect, but here is it what it intends to achieve:

• In a perfect system, every aspect of the food supply chain would be able to access and provide data from a simple portal, utilizing existing technology — predominantly mobile phones and tablet computers.
• Ideally, the entire food supply chain would have access to the same information system which would keep track of products’ information from top-to-bottom. Food-safety events would be easily communicated through alerts at appropriate levels which would allow for immediate intervention and correction.
• The entire supply chain could easily track a product in real time with entries made from the time a food product leaves its point of origin all the way to the point of final sale. Each point along the product’s path would be documented with specifics about entry and exit of custody.
• Information would be collected not only about the where, when, and how a food product came to be, but also about sustainability practices, worker training, and other currently hard-to-trace information — temperature controls and warehousing conditions, among others — all within one, universal system.
• Ultimately, the buyer would be able to scan the product and be provided with the full production history. The information, relevant to the consumer, could be transmitted to them in the same manner.

The reality is this ideal system doesn’t exist yet. Fortunately, new technology does provide a lot of these capabilities. There are information-management systems that cover everything from documentation and labeling for the farmer in the field all the way to vendors at the retail level. These systems can help provide important information about the product’s life in a bar-code based system directly to the consumer.

To choose from the multitude of technology platforms, it is important to identify what a recordkeeping system needs to do. What information needs to be tracked? How many participants are involved in the product’s journey through the supply chain? Who are those participants? What systems need to be integrated with others in and out of your facility? All of these are key questions to ask when exploring recordkeeping systems.

Further, it is important that a digital recordkeeping or information-management program is acceptable by your company’s auditing method. What is required for a digital recordkeeping system in a U.S. Department of Agriculture Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) audit may not be the same as the requirements for a Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) audit.

Once platforms have been identified to meet your company’s needs, exploring a wish list — what else the system should do and how you want it to work — can be done. It may not be possible to get harvest-to-table visibility with dashboard management on a mobile device just yet, but today’s digital record keeping systems can give your company the aspects it needs to remain competitive, compliant, and profitable.