origins go back to the spinach crisis in 2006. That crisis, in
which spinach contaminated with E. coli caused dozens of
illnesses and several deaths, cost the industry between $40
million and $70 million that year.
The following year was even worse for spinach growers
and processors. “People just stopped consuming spinach,”
The spinach recall was just one of many in
that period. Vaché says the industry had about
900 recalls in 2007 and 2008. “The response
proved difficult and costly,” he says.
The produce industry acknowledged it had to
do a better job with traceability. The problem, Vaché
explains, was the amount of time needed to trace food back
to its origin under the existing processes. “It took an inordinate amount of time,” he says. That led to creation of the
PTI, which involves growers, shippers, wholesalers, and
grocers.
Vaché admits that implementation is not as far along as
participants might like. According to GS1 US, the goal was
to have supply chain-wide electronic traceability for every
case of produce by the end of 2012. Though the industry is
unlikely to meet that goal, officials say it is making
progress.
Even those who may have initially resisted because of the
cost of implementation are coming around, Payne says.
“Things have been slow,” he says, “but of late we’re seeing
more interest in the general concept of traceability.”
tory accuracy to between 98 and 99 percent from the low
90s, and eliminated the need to conduct daily physical
inventories.
technologyreview TRACK AND TRACE
UNEXPECTED BENEFITS
Those who adopt technology to comply with the regulations (or the demands of their channel partners) are discovering it has other benefits. Some food businesses, particularly smaller growers, worry about the cost of the
implementation. But Vaché says that all of the participants
are learning that implementing tracking systems not only
meets anticipated regulatory requirements, but can also
provide valuable data for managing the supply chain.
He cites as an example emerging technologies that allow
fruit to be tracked back to the worker who picked and
packed it. That may be very useful in a recall. But it can
also be put to use, for example, in managing payroll by
keeping track of just how much a worker picked and
packed, he says.
Stubbs of Intermec says companies adopting technology
solutions for traceability are also using the information
they provide to improve efficiency and reduce costs. In a
case study posted on its website, Intermec describes the
experience of Lindsay, Calif.-based LoBue Citrus, which
implemented an automated system with an Intermec printer to cut the time needed to trace back shipments. The
orange grower also found that the system boosted its inven-
