DC Velocity - December 2012

require the use of electronic records, development of a common language that everyone can use, and the ability to quickly trace a product, usually within 24 to 48 hours of a request for that information.

The agency will also want to know who handled the product and how it was moved through the supply chain, according to Vaché.

In some ways, the industry is well ahead of regulators. GS1 US, a nonprofit organization that is working across the industry to develop bar-code standards for identifying and tracking products, is collaborating with every major food sector to develop approaches for tracking food through the entire supply chain.

Michelle Southall, an implementation manager for GS1
US, says the organization’s standards will meet the require-
ment to know what happened to a food shipment—“where
it was harvested, when it was shipped, where it was put
away, when it was received.”
But achieving end-to-end visibility and traceability is
complex given the number of players in food supply chains
and the number of interactions. Kevin Payne, senior direc-
tor of marketing for Intelleflex, cites a real-life example of
40 small blackberry farms shipping to a single packing-
house that then ships fruit to three DCs.

“Think about all the possible combinations. How do you
deal with all that? Then multiply that by the number of
products and the number of distributors, and the complex-
ity becomes mind-boggling,” Payne says. Intelleflex offers
battery-assisted passive RFID tags and on-demand data vis-
ibility solutions for tracking and monitoring the tempera-
ture of produce, dairy items, meats, and frozen and pack-
aged foods.

technologyreview TRACK AND TRACE

PRODUCE INDUSTRY COMING CLOSE

A prime example of the efforts to improve chainwide traceability comes from the produce industry and its Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI), an effort that pre-dates FSMA. Vaché says the initiative, which includes his organization and three others, got its formal start in 2008, but that its