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| Traceability to the Field Level |
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Traceability has a legal framework in many countries, including
the EU, USA and Japan. It is also a constituent part of many international
standards such as the GLOBALG.A.P. and Fairtrade.
In the EU food law, traceability is defined as: "The ability to trace and follow
a food, feed, food producing animal or substance intended to be, or expected to
be incorporated in a food or feed through all stages of production, processing
and distribution".
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This requirement relies on the "one
step back" and "one step forward" approach which implies for food business
operators that they must be able to identify their suppliers of food,
ingredients and many other substances intended or expected to be incorporated
into food, identify the business to which they have supplied products and
produce this information on demand, i.e. in a timely manner.
A traceability system is expected to have three basic
components:
- Supplier Traceablity: which enables the identification of the source of all
raw materials (this includes ingredients, primary packaging, and
production/processing aids)
- Process Traceablity: which enables the identification of all raw materials and
process records for each product, i.e. the processing history
- Customer Traceablity: which enables the customers for each product to be
identified
The Premium project established a robust traceability system. The system starts
by identifying the geographic coordinates of each grower by GPS technology. The
information is linked to GOOGLE maps and a dynamic web-based Food Safety and
Quality Management System (FSQMS). The database enables the forward and backward
traceability of products and activities within 15 minutes. |
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