Food traceability: one ingredient in a safe and efficient food supply: food traceability is in the news: recent news stories have focused on tracking cattle from birth to finished product to control the risk of Mad Cow, on tracking food shipments to reduce the risk of tampering, and on traceability systems to detail country of origin, animal welfare and genetic composition

Prepared Foods, Jan, 2005 by Elise Golan, Barry Krissoff, Fred Kuchler

Traceability is not only newsworthy, but investment-worthy too. Food producers have voluntarily built traceability systems to track the grain in a cereal box to the farm and the apples in a vat of apple juice to the orchard. However, traceability is just one element of any supply-management or quality-/safety-control system. What exactly is traceability? How does it work, and what can it accomplish? Most important, does the U.S. food supply have enough of it?

This examination of U.S. food traceability systems involved research into the market studies literature, interviews with industry experts, and site visits to interview owners, plant supervisors, and/or quality control managers in fruit and vegetable packing and processing plants; beef slaughter plants; grain elevators, mills, and food manufacturing plants; and food distribution centers. In some cases, the authors accompanied auditors for USDA procurement programs and were shown the firm's complete traceability records.

What is Traceability?

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which develops voluntary international standards for products and services, defines traceability as the "ability to trace the history, application or location of that which is under consideration." This definition is quite broad and does not specify a standard measurement for "that which is under consideration" (a grain of wheat or a truckload), a standard location size (field, farm or county), a list of processes that must be identified (pesticide applications or animal welfare) or a standard identification technology (pen-and-paper or computer). It does not specify that a hamburger be traceable to the cow or that the wheat in a loaf of bread be traceable to the field. It does not specify which type of system is necessary for preserving the identity of tofu-quality soybeans; controlling the quality of grain used in a particular cereal; or guaranteeing correct payments to farmers for different grades of apples.

The definition of traceability is necessarily broad, because food is a complex product and traceability is a tool for achieving a number of different objectives. As a result, no traceability system is complete. Even a hypothetical system for tracking beef--in which consumers scan their packet of beef at the checkout counter and access the animal's date and location of birth, lineage, vaccination records and use of mammalian protein supplements--is incomplete. This system does not provide traceability with respect to bacterial control in the bam, use of genetically engineered feed, or animal welfare attributes like hours at pasture and play time.

A system for tracking every input and process to satisfy every objective would be enormous and costly. Consequently, firms across the U.S. food supply system have developed varying amounts and kinds of traceability. Firms determine the necessary breadth, depth and precision of their traceability systems depending on characteristics of their production process and their traceability objectives.

Breadth describes the amount of information collected. A recordkeeping system cataloging all of a food's attributes would be enormous, unnecessary and expensive. Take, for example, a cup of coffee. The beans could come from any number of countries; be grown with numerous pesticides or just a few; be grown on huge, corporate, organic farms or small, family-run, conventional farms; be harvested by children or by machines; be stored in hygienic or pest-infested facilities; and be decaffeinated using a chemical solvent or hot water. Few, if any, producers or consumers would be interested in all this information. The breadth of most traceability systems would exclude some of these attributes.

Depth is how far back or forward the system tracks the relevant information. For example, a traceability system for decaffeinated coffee would extend back only to the processing stage. A traceability system for fair-trade coffee would extend only to information on price and terms of trade between coffee growers and processors. A traceability system for fair wages would extend to harvest; for shade-grown, to cultivation; and for nongenetically engineered, to the bean or seed. For food safety, the depth of the traceability system depends on where hazards and remedies can enter the food production chain. For some health hazards, such as Mad Cow Disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, BSE), ensuring food safety requires establishing safety measures at the farm. For other health hazards, such as foodborne pathogens, firms may need to establish a number of critical control points along the entire production and distribution chain.

Precision reflects the degree of assurance with which the tracing system can pinpoint a particular food product's movement or characteristics. In some cases, the objectives of the system will dictate a precise system while, for other objectives, a less-precise system will suffice. In bulk grain markets, for example, a less-precise system of traceability from the elevator back to a handful of farms is usually sufficient, because the elevator serves as a key quality control point for the grain supply chain. Elevators clean and sort deliveries by variety and quality, such as protein level. Elevators then blend shipments to achieve a homogeneous quality and to meet sanitation and quality standards. Once blended, only the new grading information is relevant; there is no need to track the grain back to the farm to control for quality problems. Strict tracking and segregation by farm would thwart the ability of elevators to mix shipments for homogeneous product.