The traceability issue

An Industry Insight by Marty Kerluck – New Business Development Manager, PRISYMID

“Traceability systems are simply joined-up record keeping systems”
-Marty Kerluk, Prisym ID

Most food processors and manufacturers are well aware of the EU regulation 178/2002, which lays down to Member States the general principles and requirements for food law. Article 18 of this Regulation covers the vital area of ‘Traceability’, which states: “The traceability of food, feed, food-producing animals and any other substances intended to be, or expected to be, incorporated into a food or feed shall be established at all stages of production, processing and distribution.”

This places a legal responsibility on responsible food business operators to have systems and procedures in place to identify who has supplied what product, ingredient and even packaging to them and when.

One need only look back to recent food safety incidents – the widely reported Sudan 1 incident among many others affecting even the largest brands – to realise that a situation requiring a food company to quickly trace individual ingredients through batch processing and delivery can happen to anyone at anytime.

Living up to expectations
As well as the legal onus on companies, high street operators are also driving the move to traceability. Retailers are keen to ensure that they have the necessary systems and controls in place to minimise the likelihood of food safety incidents and ensure they are able to retain consumer confidence in the event of an incident.

Total traceability of ingredients, products and batches may be required to target affected batches and enable instant, accurate and complete product recalls.

Time to respond
With traceability clearly a priority for retailers when it comes to reviewing potential product lines and awarding contracts to suppliers, the food production and processing industry must respond to ensure compliance and stay competitive. The alternatives are clear – inaction could, in the event of an incident lead to termination of contracts and loss of reputation, not to mention punitive legal action.

Faced with issues such as the increasing complexity of ingredients and the need to identify individual batches, plus the requirement for real-time information, there are usually ample grounds to cost-justify the move or upgrade to an IT-enabled system.

Benefits
Over 20 years of operating experience from the pharmaceutical industry have highlighted three main roles for traceability systems: to provide information to assist in process control and management e.g. stock control, material usage, quality control, meeting regulatory demands; to help when problems may arise e.g. processing issues or product recalls and; to provide hard evidence about products in cases of consumer concerns and to support claims for your products.

There are knock on benefits for customers too as improved identification and labelling leads to reduced picking errors and returned deliveries, faster despatch and a more efficient stock management system.

Getting started
Traceability systems are simply joined-up record keeping systems, which ideally, should fit easily into the current working practices of the business including integrating smoothly into existing MRP and ERP systems to reduce manual processes.

Compatibility between the software for barcode label printing or RFID tag coding and the hardware for recording and reading the information is vital. Suppliers that can point to proven experience implementing complete solutions in other critical industries such as pharmaceuticals or automotive have obvious advantages.

A good solutions provider should be able to offer software that can be operated on a wide range of Wi-Fi or narrow band RF data capture devices as well as mobile devices should you require it.

The cost involved may be less than you think, but the benefits all-round could have very positive effects on your business and on your competitiveness.

For further information on PRISYM ID Limited’s products and services, please call +44 (0)118 936 4400 or email info@prisymid.com. Alternatively, visit www.prisymid.com.