Contents
- 1 Overview of Traceability Chain
- 2 Facilitating Trade in Safe Foods: Standards or Regulations?
- 3 HOW DOES TRACEABILITY WORK?
- 4 How is metrological traceability enforced?
- 5 How Many Traceability Chain Coins Are There?
- 6 Need advice from an expert?
- 7 Question 1 : Do I need a Blockchain for effective Food Recall?
- 8 Question 2: Are current food regulations driving the need for Blockchains?
- 9 Question 3: Can Blockchain guarantee Food Safety and Food Authenticity?
- 10 Question 4: Can Blockchain deliver a guarantee of Food Provenance?
- 11 Question 5: What’s the difference between provenance, traceability and chain of custody?
- 12 Still have questions?
- 13 What are some requirements for metrological traceability?
- 14 What does that mean?
- 15 What is a Traceability System?
- 16 What is Measurement Traceability?
- 17 What is Metrological Traceability?
- 18 WHAT IS OPTEL’S INTELLIGENT SUPPLY CHAIN®?
- 19 What is Supply Chain Traceability?
- 20 What is Supply Chain Visibility?
- 21 What is the “traceability chain”?
- 22 What Is Traceability Chain's Price Today?
- 23 What is traceability?
- 24 Why Does Traceability Matter to Safe Food Trade?
- 25 Why is “Traceability” Important?
- 26 Why is Measurement Traceability Important?
- 27 Why is metrological traceability important?
- 28 Why Is Traceability Important?
- 29 WHY TRACEABILITY?
- 30 History of Traceability Chain
Overview of Traceability Chain
Facilitating Trade in Safe Foods: Standards or Regulations?
In this post, learn how different types of standards and regulations work in practice and the complementary roles they each play in mitigating food safety threats.
HOW DOES TRACEABILITY WORK?
Traceability begins with product identification, which is at the core of OPTEL’s serialization expertise.The company’s GeoTraceability solutions cover the beginning of the process — raw materials and resource extraction; its traditional offering covers the middle — the manufacturing process; and its Verify Platform solution creates a direct link between brands and consumers.
How is metrological traceability enforced?
Field instruments are calibrated by authorized accredited regional laboratories.These laboratories are accredited and verified by national organizations like National Metrology Institutes.In turn, national organizations are themselves checked by international organizations that use internationally accepted references and standards like the International System of Units.The processes are all documented according to strict regulations, so a history is created and can be verified.This hierarchy helps ensure that standards of reference are enforced and stay the same no matter where the measurements are performed.There are more layers than that (for example, an organization can have their own standards that they must adhere too) but you can think of it like a pyramid, with the true value on top and layers from a national organization under, accredited regional labs below and organizational standards below that, with the instruments used at the bottom.It’s also represented as a vertical chain, with each organization being a link.
How Many Traceability Chain Coins Are There?
There are currently 0 Traceability Chain coins circulating out of a max supply of 1,000,000,000.
Need advice from an expert?
NexTec Group is an award-winning business software consulting firm with over 25 years’ experience.We specialize in implementing ERP, CRM, BI, Cloud and On-premise solutions that can manage product recalls and customer issues, track products, reduce waste and improve operations.
Question 1 : Do I need a Blockchain for effective Food Recall?
No.In a closed supply chain with limited exchange partners you don’t need a blockchain to execute a rapid recall of an unsafe product.Any GS1-standards based technology platform can be used to rapidly trace (backward) and track (forward) a consumer packaged product if the product has a data carrier (barcode) and/or batch/lot # attached.Check out the GS1 global office website or your country GS1 organization as they have a traceability and product recall standard and guidelines on how to execute recall effectively.
Question 2: Are current food regulations driving the need for Blockchains?
Yes.Regulations are generally non-prescriptive and in the food chain they call for a “1-up/1-down” traceability approach.In complex, multi-party supply chains this is costly, time-consuming and can lead to (preventable) illness and death.In the Walmart Mango use case, it took almost 7 days to execute a mock recall based on 1-up/1-down approach and 2.2 seconds using their specific Blockchain configuration.Blockchain technology is helpful in complex, multi-country, multi-exchange party supply chains that already have good data governance and industry data standards (GS1) in place.A standards-based blockchain enables linkages to be made between the exchange parties and permits sharing of product master data, transactional data and event data — the unhindered flow and visibility of this data is what we call transparency.
Question 3: Can Blockchain guarantee Food Safety and Food Authenticity?
No.Blockchain is oversold as a guarantee of food safety, food authenticity and anti-counterfeit in general.The only legitimate and legal way to guarantee food safety and authenticity is through analytical testing of the product itself — we cannot track the outer package or container and claim the food is safe and authentic.Furthermore, on-pack security features (forensic, covert or overt) help in fraud detection but forensic evidence is required for successful conviction in food fraud cases.
Question 4: Can Blockchain deliver a guarantee of Food Provenance?
No.This is confusing I know.Provenance refers to geographic source or origin and is determined by forensic science not software, GPS or hardware (see below traceability).Let me share a hypothetical example; lets say we have potatoes and carrots in Vietnam that go to market as ‘product of Vietnam’.In one possible scenario, bad actors could roll the veggies in dampened local dirt to enhance the illusion of being a local product.When the product is forensically tested, both the veggie species, and their carbon fingerprint proves they are indigenous to, and were grown in a particular region of China.This is food fraud and classified as an economically motivated adulteration where a cheaper product is sold as a more expensive premium local product.Blockchain, IoT, stickers/logos or barcodes on bundles of products will not solve this because human behaviour is the variable.
Question 5: What’s the difference between provenance, traceability and chain of custody?
Even the experts get these confused.Let me explain how I see it.Provenance is defined above as geographic source or origin and it is guaranteed only through the results of forensic testing of it’s carbon fingerprint.You will hear experts or software companies say they ‘track provenance’.In many cases what they really mean is classic supply chain traceability or in some cases, chain of custody.Classic traceability includes the source of the materials and is best interpreted as the ‘business or logistics source’.In my opinion, we should not call it tracking provenance as we are not necessarily tracking the true geographic source or origin per-se, we are tracking physical ‘movement’ from a business or logistics source through the supply chain.This draws an important distinction between classic product traceability and forensic product traceability of the geographic source or origin as defined by forensic testing of the products carbon fingerprint.
Still have questions?
If you have specific questions about how the Framework can be applied in your context,
or would just like to speak directly with a member of the AFi, please contact us below.
What are some requirements for metrological traceability?
A major component of metrological traceability is an unbroken chain of calibrations.That means that every instrument and standard of reference is calibrated throughout the chain (or pyramid) without missing a step.
What does that mean?
Let’s break down this intimidating word salad.
What is a Traceability System?
A traceability system is the “the totality of data and operations that is capable of maintaining the desired information about a product and its components through all or part of its production and utilization chain.” [1] As a product passes from one market actor to another, a traceability system collects and records data points to perform real-time and ex-post tracking of a product’s movement through the value chain from origin to final destination.Traceability systems vary widely in their scope and sophistication.They can range from individual firm-level systems capturing transactions within their own supply chain to multistakeholder platforms capable of tracking a product across the entire food system.
What is Measurement Traceability?
According to International Vocabulary of Metrology (VIM), Metrological Traceability or Measurement Traceability is a “property of a measurement result whereby the result can be related to a reference through a documented unbroken chain of calibrations, each contributing to the measurement uncertainty.
What is Metrological Traceability?
According to the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM, translated to International Office of Weights and Measures), metrological traceability is the “property of a measurement result whereby the result can be related to a reference through a documented unbroken chain of calibrations, each contributing to the measurement uncertainty”.
WHAT IS OPTEL’S INTELLIGENT SUPPLY CHAIN®?
OPTEL’s digital supply chain traceability technologies allow you to dig deeper into your supply chain data, providing valuable, actionable, granular data that you can use to increase your company’s efficiency, transparency and profitability.
What is Supply Chain Traceability?
Think about the products you sell and all the materials or ingredients that go into those products.
What is Supply Chain Visibility?
With supply chain visibility, you can see your entire supply chain at each tier of operations.Traceability is an important part of this process, which is why the two are usually talked about together.
What is the “traceability chain”?
Simply put, the number of “links” between the primary calibration (NIST) and the customer.The more “links’, or calibration transfers, the larger the measurement uncertainty.That cannot be avoided.
What Is Traceability Chain's Price Today?
Traceability Chain (TAC) is trading at $0.0011 USD, increasing by 0.02% since yesterday.Traceability Chain has traded $0 USD in the last 24 hours.
What is traceability?
The term “traceability” describes the property of the indicated measured value of a measuring instrument (or a material measure) to be compared, by one or more steps, with the national standard for the related quantity.
Why Does Traceability Matter to Safe Food Trade?
Traceability reduces contamination, disease, and spoilage in the food supply by identifying hazards before affected products make it to end consumer markets.When unsafe foods slip through the cracks and enter the system, these systems allow market actors and/or regulators to identify and isolate the source quickly in order to mitigate the consequences.In the event of a product recall, traceability enables a targeted withdrawal of the foods most likely to have been affected, thereby minimizing waste and market distortions.
Why is “Traceability” Important?
If a product quality problem occurs, the manufacturer of the product must take effective measures promptly.A slow or ineffective response from the manufacturer will create a sense of distrust among consumers or business partners, which may even endanger the existence of the company.In addition, as laws to protect consumers have been implemented, the number of companies required to quickly recall their products due to problems has been increasing every year.
Why is Measurement Traceability Important?
Measurement traceability is important because it gives you confidence and assurance that your measurement results agree with national or international standards within the statement of uncertainty in measurement.
Why is metrological traceability important?
We need metrological traceability for a few reasons.First, as we mentioned above, it ensures that errors can be tracked back to their source.It also helps ensure the integrity of the data across the chain, and how trustworthy it is.Whether a lab or a factory is getting data from the next town or from a different continent, they need assurance that the data is reliable and that measurements are correct in order to produce anything from environmental analysis to medical compounds.
Why Is Traceability Important?
Traceability establishes the identity and provenance of a product.It ties the product to the documented and validated methods for obtaining, manufacturing, purifying, testing, storing, and administering the product.A product without these credentials is considered by the FDA to be adulterated and therefore should not be marketed.It is easy to see why this must be so.Only through rigorous documentation can evidence be considered in place to assure why any particular cell therapy can be considered safe.
WHY TRACEABILITY?
Beyond complying with legal requirements, OPTEL’s traceability solutions can give your organization a significant competitive advantage.