A recent recall of Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein (HVP) has once again reinforced the harmful effects of a disconnected supply chain. HVP is an ingredient found in many spices, sauces, and mixes, products which are themselves used in millions of foods. Recalls such as these can severely affect consumer brand confidence. Because of the broken chains in our traceability system, many more brands are affected because most food manufacturers cannot see where all of the contaminated products have come from upstream nor can they see what products have been affected downstream. There are things that can be done today, however, to enable clearer visibility along the supply chain and to help you get ready for a future National Traceability System, as proposed by the U.S. Congress. As a provider of traceability services, Afilias has some best practice recommendations for you for establishing a framework to help you view your product data from farm to fork.
Establish an identifier strategy. A unique identifier can be used to differentiate your product to improve visibility. Some examples of unique identifier technologies include livestock ear tags, RFID chips, 2D data matrix barcodes and serialized ID numbers, such as an Ipv6 address. There are 3 important considerations that should be address when establishing an identifier strategy that works best for you and that will make traceability easier to implement.
- Your identifiers should be standards-based. This will enable your organization to more easily and clearly communicate with others down the supply chain in a uniform way. Most standards recommended for use today have the ability to hold multiple data points that are critical to traceability. For example, a standardized serial ID number can tell us the birth date, order, and location of an animal.
- Your identifiers should be unique. The more specific an identifier is, the better. Being able to uniquely identify each of your products or each of the ingredients going into your product can prevent delays and loss of non-contaminated product in the event of a recall. If applying a unique identifier to your product or ingredient is cost prohibitive or infeasible at this time, even applying a unique identifier to a lot number is a great start that will significantly increase the amount of useful data and create a more detailed history of each product. Once this is established, it will be far more economical in the future to begin to drill down further, should regulations mandate it.
- You should consider relevant industry or association recommendations. If there is already a standard adopted by your industry, we would strongly recommend using it. Uniformity of identifiers in a product category and supply chain can ease traceability and visibility. This will enable you to more easily communicate data with those in your supply chain, should you want to, to prevent unnecessary harm to consumers and to minimize the loss of non-contaminated product.
Collect and Store your Data. Choose a data collection and storage system that works for your organization’s needs and capabilities. Many organizations create their own in-house solutions, or choose from one of the options available on the market. Whichever works best for you, it is important to make sure that your solution enables you to keep an up-to-date database of your products, their identification properties, and the ability to store movement at least one or two steps up or down the supply chain.
Comply with a National Traceability System. Afilias’ Discovery Services is a traceability solution that fits the above criteria and will provide you visibility for your product that will allow you to comply with the National Traceability System that is being proposed by Congress. In effect, it works much the same way as a Web search engine does searching for the unique identifiers associated with contaminated products. Discovery Services can work with any of the standardized identifiers discussed and, in the event of a recall, can easily find each specific product no matter what kind of identifier it is. The more unique the identifier, the more specific the ADS results will be. In addition, ADS provides enhanced security allowing visibility only into specified information. Each participant along the supply chain can choose to share only relevant data with partners and be confident that it will remain unshared with competitors.
Establishing full Farm-to-Fork traceability will enable us to more quickly and accurately get the full history of product data along the entire supply chain when a recall occurs. We can get the RIGHT foods off the shelves and off of consumer’s plates giving them the confidence that they are feeding their families safe, healthy meals.
