Product tracing is the ability to trace potentially contaminated product, the consumption of which may cause an adverse
health impact, through the supply chain.
There is some debate whether product tracing is related to food safety. It is. When a potentially contaminated product is in the
supply chain, and perhaps in the marketplace, there is the potential for consumers to
become ill—a food safety issue. Rapid, accurate product tracing allows that product to
be removed from distribution, protecting
public health. Some in the food safety community argue that product tracing is strictly
reactive, since it isn’t activated until after a
contamination event has occurred. That’s
not necessarily true. The ability to trace back
and identify points of convergence can help
identify the root cause of an issue and, hopefully, put controls in place to stop that type
of issue from occurring again. A good traceback can help prevent a future event.
Figure 1: Globalizing the Cheeseburger
Used with permission, courtesy of Shaun Kennedy and the National Center for Food Protection and Defense.
Outbreaks Drive Recognition of Issues
Too many outbreaks, each with individual nuances, have exemplified the inability
to trace products throughout a supply chain. Many firms report that they are able to trace
products. When pressed for details, it might be revealed that they may have very good
internal controls or may keep great records at receiving and shipping. This doesn’t
mean that their supply chain partners have these systems in place. The supply chain is
only as strong as its weakest link.
Hopefully, product tracing systems and practices will continue to improve so that
the Peanut Corporation of America incident will remain the prime example of product tracing gone wrong. If all firms in the longest supply chain used the maximum 24
hours to identify one step forward and one step back (as required by the Bioterrorism
Act of 2002), all affected product should have been identified within days, perhaps
weeks. Instead, for months after the problem
was identified, product recalls continued to
be announced, culminating in over 360
firms issuing recalls of nearly 4,000 products.
In contrast, the infamous tomato/pepper
outbreak might be viewed as product tracing
gone theoretically right (with the epidemiological investigation going wrong). Although
the recordkeeping practices of the produce
industry were blamed for the inability to
identify the point of convergence of contaminated tomatoes, and certainly, paper
records slow things down, the fact that common points along the supply chains were
not found could have suggested that tomatoes were not the culprit.
points in the supply chain for the produce, ingredient and processed food industries. Country of origin labeling
(COOL), while intended as a marketing
tool, was cited by many firms as providing consumers with information about
product origins. The loopholes associated with COOL won’t be discussed
here, except to say that COOL does not
provide product tracing. As mentioned
previously, product tracing is a requirement of the system, with visibility
needed at each point in the supply
chain. Simply knowing the country of
origin is insufficient, and for some products, the complexity of the supply chain
is such that the list of supplying countries is long. As illustrated in Figures 1
Figure 2: Global Ingredients of the
Cheeseburger
Used with permission, courtesy of Shaun Kennedy and the National Center for Food Protection and Defense.
COOL Is Not Product Tracing
Still, these high-profile cases gave American consumers a glimpse into the complexity of the food supply chain and left them wondering where their food actually comes
from. When IFT conducted a study of product tracing in food systems, done under
contract with the FDA in 2008–2009, we spoke to 58 food companies along several
