How Food Recalls Work – A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Distribution Technology

This is from an interesting post at The Distribution Blog:

However, not all farmers are keeping tabs on everything that flows out of their farm. Surprisingly, despite all the recalls in recent years, farmers are not legally required to track their produce. I spoke about this issue with Dennis Ferrarelli of Produce Pro, Inc., a leading provider of software for the distribution of perishable goods, and he emphasized the importance of planning ahead. In fact, some industry groups are advocating for recall planning guidelines, such as the Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI). The PTI’s ultimate goal is supply chain-wide adoption of electronic traceability for every case of produce by the year 2012. In order to accomplish this, the PTI has encouraged use of the Global Trade Item Number (GTIN), which would include a company’s unique prefix and reference numbers for the individual product. With such specificity written into each GTIN, companies could pinpoint the contamination source and recall only the affected items, avoiding a disastrous total recall. However, many farmers pass on this opportunity because they are often expected to front the costs related to traceability themselves. By the time a farm has paid for its GS1 Company prefix, installed barcode scanners and printers, and made arrangements to label every case with a barcode, it could be looking at a $200,000 implementation. So, each farmer has a choice: spend a lot of money upfront to make food recalls easier or save that money and hope a recall never happens. Similar to the health insurance situation, traceability advocates would like to force farmers to make the first choice for the presumed benefit of the farm as well as the consumer. Should farmers be legally required to join these initiatives? Will the U.S. government stop walking on eggshells with this issue before we find ourselves talking about the great food recall of 2011? Share your opinion in the comments section below.