How Significant Is Food Traceability To Public Safety?

By Melissa Lind, contributing writer

In the food industry, traceability is major concern as the safety of the food supply chain is directly linked to public safety. Despite its appearance as a topical issue or “buzz word,” food traceability has become a vital process to ensure the safety of consumers.

Supply chain traceability ensures the ability to identify where products came from, how they travelled, how long it took them to arrive to each destination, as well as the product’s final destination. Not knowing where a contaminated product came from or where it is going equates to not being able to avoid or minimize food-safety events.

Food-contamination events are inevitable. It isn’t a matter of “if,” it is a matter of “when.” Ensuring products can be traced from harvest or factory to table helps to minimize damage when an emergency occurs. Traceability is a form of food defense and involves four steps — preparedness, response, recovery, and prevention — to ensure minimal harm will result from a serious occurrence.

• Preparation — Traceability helps provide visibility into the supply chain. It also allows for preparation in emergency situations. If food ingredients and products are completely traceable, every step aspect of the product’s life is known.
• Reaction — Traceability enables a quick and appropriate response to emergency occurrences. It provides the ability to quickly notify appropriate parties of the occurrence and put next courses of action in motion. This may include recalls of affected products.
• Recovery — Traceability allows the industry, along with governmental authorities, to quickly identify problems and issue alerts as appropriate. Nothing can be done to prevent an event that has already occurred, but it is possible to mitigate the damage. Immediately addressing a problem does a lot more to maintain public trust.
• Prevention – With a firm traceability system, we can identify the cause of a problem that has occurred. This identification and analysis of the event can help us prevent future occurrences.

Food-safety events such as bacterial contamination, illegal and fraudulent practices, chemical contamination, and the threat of bioterrorism are an on-going worry. When a food-safety breach occurs, time is the enemy. The ability to quickly locate both the affected product and then the source of the problem provides increased confidence to consumers. However, considering the size and spread of the global, food supply chain, safety events are actually pretty rare, but they do occur.

In addition to the significant public health concern, traceability also preserves good business standing. Being able to respond to a recall is essential, but traceability can help avoid costly events in the future. Even when a food-safety event occurs, consumers are more likely to return to a brand or product if the responsible company responded appropriately, quickly and can assure the public the problem has been addressed and corrective measures are in place to prevent the same issue in the future.