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Food  traceability introduction

EU regulation 178/2002

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Food traceability introduction

ISO (International Standards Organization) defines traceability as the ability to recover at any moment the history, process or location of an entity, using thereby recorded data identifiers. The entity can be an activity, a process, a product, an organism as well as a person.

From the users’ point of view, traceability may be considered as the qualitative and quantitative follow up of products through the supply chain, in space as well as in time. From the information management’s point of view, traceability means the systematic association of an information flow at a flow of goods, so that at any time, predefined data related to batches of product groupings (also predefined) can be traced back thereby making use of key identifiers.

When defining traceability, the direction in the supply chain must be distinguished. ‘Tracking’ (downstream the supply chain) is the ability to follow the path of a product through the supply chain, based on one or more criteria. This is important when it comes to recalls of products. ‘Tracing’ (upstream the supply chain) is the ability to identify the origin and the characteristics of a particular product through the supply chain, based on one or more relevant criteria. Tracing is especially useful to detect the cause of quality problems. Most of the time traceability is associated with the follow up of serious incidents. Although, it can also be used to find back production and packaging problems, such as labels that are wrongly placed, errors in coupons or price indication, taste problems in a specific batch.

Within the food safety approach, the European Regulation (EC) 178/2002 claims that a European Authority for Food Safety shall be established off the 1st of January 2005. From than on, food and feed business operators shall have in place systems and procedures in order to identify any person by whom they have been supplied / or to which their products have been supplied. With these systems they shall be able to provide information on food safety matters.

The fundamental steps to introduce a traceability system

Recording and storing information at each stage

Food business operators at each stage of the food chain should at least identify food (products and raw materials) and its suppliers and purchasers, correlate them with each other, and record and store this information.

Mechanism for food identification

The identification management of food (products and raw materials) is the basis for establishing traceability. This task is composed of the following elements:

a. Determine the unit (identification unit or traceable) of the products and raw materials to be traced and manage them by assigning ID numbers to them. Food business operators should determine the identification unit of their products. Properly determined identification units help them trace products efficiently. Identification units are individual products and lots, and should be specified using identification marks. Identification units often change according to the stage of the food chain (production and shipment, preparation and processing, distribution and sale).

b. Isolate and manage products and raw materials for each identified unit.

c. Correlate the identification unit of products and raw materials with their suppliers and purchasers, and record this information.

d. Correlate the identification unit of raw materials with that of semi-finished and finished products, and record this information.

e. If raw materials or products are combined or divided, correlate the identification unit before the combination or division with that after such work, and record this information.

Important details:

When the identification unit is a lot, it is important to determine the conditions for forming the lot. The meaning of lots can be considered from the following two sides:

Risk management

In the event of an accident, the identified lot is used as the basis of recalls or removal of the product and of the investigation of the cause. Thus, whether or not the lot of the product is properly formed affects how effectively the product can be recalled or removed and how effectively the cause can be investigated.

Provision of labelling and other information

To ensure the correspondence between the description of the label and the product, there should exist a mechanism by which lots are formed according to the information of the label and these lots are segregated and supplied.

The system should be established so that the production lot can correspond with the shipment lot. While the production lot is identified by the place of production or the producer, information about cultivation, breeding or aquaculture, and others, the place of shipment or the shipper, standards, and other shipment information are used in addition to identify the shipment lot.

What is needed is that “it is possible to track and trace the history of food, such as processing and distribution.”. The history of food includes the information that helps identify the food business operator that owns the food, the date, the place and the lot. In a traceability system, the history of food is managed and retrieved by the lot number. Some food business operators may want to add various other data (e.g., ingredients, temperature, date of preparation, pesticide residues and other inspection records) as production process information, according to the characteristics of the food. Food business operators determine the additional information considering its usefulness and the costs involved. In this case, businesses should organize the lot of products so that it may correspond with such additional information, and should also distinguish these products from other products. The products composing the lot should be represented by uniform information.

Internal inspection

Internal inspection is important in securing the reliability and increasing the function of a traceability system. In internal inspection, it is desirable to:

• Check whether the work is performed according to the predetermined procedures.

• Check that food and its information can be tracked and traced.

• Check changes in the weight and quantity of food during the work.

In addition to internal inspection, the food business operators with traceability systems may mutually inspect their products.

Important details:

The procedures for tracking or tracing the food and its information of a particular lot number and for checking changes in the weight and quantity of food during the work should be established and made into written in-house inspection procedures.

Inspection should be implemented according to the inspection schedule and its results should be recorded. To make good use of inspection results, inspection should be carried out by the PDCA (plan-do-check-action) cycle. For this purpose, the organization and system should be established, the inspection standard should be created, and inspection plans and records as well as audit records should be developed. In addition, to minimize the burden of internal inspection, it will be effective to compile manuals of information inputting and recording and to give periodical training to personnel and employees. 

Third-party inspection

The inspection of food business operators and others by a proper third-party organization specializing in audit and inspection is an effective method for keeping the function of the traceability system on a high level, identifying and solving the problems of an internal system through use of external know-how, and gaining greater consumer trust. Third-party inspection will require a certain amount of costs, and so how to implement this inspection should be studied in overall consideration of the service provided by the third-party inspection organization.

Provision of information to the consumer

In general, there are two methods of providing information to the consumer:

(1) to provide information only about the fact that a traceability system is introduced

The information provided should include the fact that a traceability system is introduced, and the identification numbers and points of contact. The points of contact are the food business operators and individuals who sell food or offer food service to the consumer. When an inquiry is received from the consumer, if the history information is stored in a commonly used centre (that is managed by a group of food business operators), the history information is collected and arranged by accessing the centre and then is provided to the consumer. If the history information is owned by individual food business operators, such information must be collected from each of the enterprises. Thus, the parties concerned should agree in advance on the enterprise in charge of this task and on the method of the task.

(2) Case where history information is provided

In this case, the history information is provided mainly at the store or on Internet homepages. A prior agreement should be got about common rules to guarantee consumer convenience (information easy to understand, easy access) and reliability of information and to protect private information.

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