Emerging Trends in Traceability Techniques in Food Systems

Abstract

One of the major concerns of consumers and policy developers is food safety and transparency in food supply chain systems. Recall systems and traceability become important components of food safety management systems (FSMS) that reflect the ability of system to trace and track the food product information throughout the upstream and downstream. Currently, food industries are implementing automation in data collection and record management to ensure the precision and consistency of individual product or lot identification. Majority of traceability systems that are in practice, lack the ability to connect food chain records resulting in errors or delaying the acquisition of required data, particularly in foodborne disease outbreak. These concerns need to be minimized by implementing an integrated approach based on conceptual, logistic and actual traceability techniques. This chapter describes the advancement and implementation of actual traceability techniques to effectively manage the food product information during the entire food supply chain. The technologies and devices are continuously improving to ensure the implementation of actual traceability. The technological advancements in traceability techniques such as advanced radio frequency identification device (RFID), isotope analysis and nucleic acids barcoding have raised consumers as well as policy developers’ satisfactions by presenting the actual traceability concept.