Not offical Chill-On blog

echnology evolves by leaps and bounds each year, and for companies competing for business in the crowded field of food traceability, it’s no different.

Last year saw start-ups, new programs and better software as the produce industry poured more focus and money into meeting the Produce Traceability Initiative’s voluntary milestones. The goal of the PTI, led by the major produce trade groups Produce Marketing Association, United Fresh, and the Canadian Produce Marketing Association, is for full supply chain traceability from farm to retail stores by 2012.

Companies like RedLine Solutions Inc., Santa Clara, Calif., worked on software and hardware through traceability pilot programs in places like Salinas, Calif., while other companies such as KPG Solutions Inc., Longwood, Fla., and YottaMark, Redwood City, Calif., announced plans for or started new traceback platforms for consumers.

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Our future may depend on the ingenuity of our entrepreneurs. A changing climate could fundamentally transform Ireland and the rest of the world. We’ll need to use our own resources – food and agriculture businesses will be vital for the survival of both individual communities and the nation as a whole.

The Green Dragon team innovation challenge, a new initiative from Agri-Aware, is gently laying the first seeds for the emerging green revolution. The competition challenges both Junior (first to third year) and Senior (Transition to sixth year) students to develop a business idea into a useful and potentially profitable product or service.

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Manufacturing companies are increasingly under more pressure to be compliant. Whether mandated by the government, customers, third-party auditors or quality standards such as ISO, companies must prove their ability to track and trace inventory, goods and other items in order to remain compliant and competitive in the local and global marketplace.

At a Bioterrorism Compliance Seminar held several years ago in Fort Worth, Texas, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Southwest Regional Director Dennis Baker challenged the audience to consider a scenario: Should forward- and back-lot tracking compliance be done manually on paper, or should the FDA require this tracking to be computerized? While Baker said the FDA considered making automating lot tracking mandatory, the agency ultimately decided against it because competition was already successfully making that demand.

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IF there was an undersecretary for food safety this is what they should be doing…

1. Tattoo on a body part that you use every day the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) Mission Statement:

The Food Safety and Inspection Service is the public health agency in the U.S. Department of Agriculture responsible for ensuring that the nation’s commercial supply of meat, poultry, and egg products is safe, wholesome, and correctly labeled and packaged.

2. Push for tax credits for workable food safety innovations for small, medium, and large producers and support small and medium-sized agriculture by growing local and regional markets for meat.
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11. Make better use of technology to ensure traceability of all food so that when an outbreak occurs authorities can quickly identify the source and limit the spread of the contamination and stop the disruption to the economy.

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Did you happen to see reference to the traceability study in Europe that used RFID tags to track produce? The Financial Times from Jan. 26 covered the issue.

The crux of the FT coverage looked at the possibility that RFID, disappointing so far in their transformational effect on the supply chain, will have better effect in the future supply chain. The concept of “shared supply chains” will take on more weight, as shared logistic increase transportation efficiency and somehow minimize the carbon footprint, said sources quoted in the story..

For fresh produce, the story refers to the Vers Schakel project, which looked at the benefits of using RFID tags on lettuce containers to track the produce through the supply chain.

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