The Importance of Food traceability and What its Enforcement Means!

Do you know Food traceability takes center stage in an organization’s supply chain? Food Traceability is perhaps the most important factor in food security. The international standards of foods are stressing to enforce food traceability. Improved food traceability means the customers will be safe and, regulators will be happy. So, is this what food traceability mean? It certainly isn’t, and we are shedding some light on it, including its intro and some other facts.
What does it mean for Consumers?
Traceability is the final link in the food chain, which starts from the farm or primary producer. It’s for the users concerned with different problems associated with the products. Quality and price are the most important issues.
For some buyers, other issues affect their decision. These problems can be religious, personal preferences or of political concerns. These are the fears that the retailers have to answer when they advertise the product. Building trust between the retailer and consumer is important. The trust becomes hard to build thanks to the industrialization of food chains. The aggregation of food also played a significant role.

                                                                                       What is Traceability?

Food Traceability is a method, which is used to obtain valuable information, which helps to build trust between the buyer and producer of food. As it offers quality information including food treatment, events and everything the product goes through, it helps the consumer to be confident about their purchase.
What sort of Information does it provide?

Following are a few causes that Food traceability stands for:
• The consumer will have access to simplified everything is fine
• The customer can check the information by himself in future
• It’s an easy way to obtain more information to help the customer make a well-informed decision

Specifically what users want it to be:
• Expressly provides easy access to information, which will allow the user to assess quality and safety of food
• Provides access to indicators such as the environment in which the food grew
• Provides straightforward information about allergens
• It assures that the food is compatible with beliefs, customs, and preferences

A Few Other Possible Uses
The specific food requirements for a specified consumer group offers challenges, which are related to documentation. The food traceability is used to provide this documentation as a mean to expose relevant information, which is important to ensure special labeling is used entirely on the food.
The documentation holds absolute value as the labeling of such documentation helps to build trust via reliable information about specific processes, which the food went through.

These specifications can be:
• Organic Food
• Local Food
• Green Food
• Vegetarian Food
• Halal
• Kosher

With proper help of the authorities, the consumers can use food traceability to establish:
• The Food sold under the label of organic is organic as they document the product history. This notion will include the production process, use of additives, medicine, fertilizers, etc
• Local Food is local by documentation where the food item has been from its farm to fork.
• Documents, which helps with how and where the food was produced and transported
• Reports, which help with food information such as their raw ingredients from plants or stocks
These can also cater other information for users. This information can be:
• Types of allergens possible present in the food
• Ingredients used to make the food item
• Nutrition details including fat content, energy, vitamins, etc
• Documentation details about animal’s well-being
• The origins of food

                                                                                             Branding and Recipes

Branding is all about building trust between the brand owner and consumer. It makes the user believe that the brand works to maintain its high standards of quality. The additional information including recipes, how to make the most out of the product, can be useful to establish the trust. These provide documentation, which is used to strengthen the relationship.

                                                                                               Detection of Fraud

The possibility of Fraud remains a problem for both consumer and brand owners. This liability includes replica or the possibility of fraud. When someone exposes a name, it loses their perception of being high quality. After all, quality is the only reason why people pay higher amounts without a hitch. Maintaining high quality is why some brands are more expensive as compared to others. The mislabeled products are sold for a higher price as they offer falsified information about the products. This is a common problem in every trade. Food traceability is a tool, which is used to discover and prevent such frauds.
Some techniques and documentations about food and provide extra proofs about the correct branding: These include the following:

• Genetic Profile
• Specific Quality parameters with high Granularity

                                                                                    How to Use Traceability?

It's used to trace the food item including its origin, documentation, and even tagging the food. Some of the information that is provided or published are as following:

• Brand Name
• Product Name
• Expected Life
• Barcode
• Ingredients
• Batch or lot number
• Web Link

                                                           Food traceability as for a customer, it is related to

• Finding documentation of different attributes or properties of the product
• A check of there is any specific information associated with the bought item. This is off particular important whenever a product is redrawn or retracted from its market
• Product Documentation of different attributes or properties about the product
• Check if there is any unique information related to the bought item. This is crucial whenever the product is redrawn or retracted to the market.

The product information is deployed in electronic systems. It’s either at the retailer or at web pages which are designed by product to get information about the food. Internal food traceability is essential to generate the item specific information, as more generic or static info is collect and published for the particular product type.
Food traceability can be used to certify the origin of the product, what the product intends to do. It is achieved by analytical methods, genetic fingerprints and the specifics of product
The Documentation food safety parameters including physical treatment, unbroken Cooling chains and exposure to possible contamination. This also includes the documented use of ingredients and assess information such as production, processing, and transport.