New traceability technology helps consumers and retailers know as much as they can about the food products they purchase and consume.

The issue of food safety continues to make front-page news on a regular basis as high-profile recalls drive serious questions about how to keep our food supply safe. Increased globalization of the food supply chain – combined with political instability, more rapid spread of contamination and disease, and the growing threat of international terrorism – all contribute to a growing focus on food safety and underscore the need for better traceability options.

In addition, the emergence of stricter legislation around traceability has intensified the focus on product lifecycle transparency and is redefining the way imports enter some countries. There is no doubt about it – emerging regulations will place greater accountability on those companies involved in the international food chain. 

Although most organizations can report on what is supposed to happen to products as they flow through the supply chain, they often have very limited capabilities to report on what actually happens to each product in the production flow.  

This is no easy task when you consider how many parties are usually involved in the production of each final product. A farmer providing fruit to a packing house must register all the treatments used in growing the fruit, then register the details of how and when the crop was harvested. He or she must then report where and for what period of time it was stored, and all the freight company details involved in transporting the produce to the packing shed – a great deal of information before processing begins.

When contamination scares arise or product recalls are necessary, the ability to obtain immediate information regarding the source of contamination, scope of products involved, suppliers involved, origin and end-point of the products is paramount. Traceability systems help address these issues with surgical precision, helping to reduce the risk of unnecessary recall costs and lost sales, as well as preserving brand integrity and consumer confidence.

Ahead of the Game
Some visionary food and beverage companies, such as Allied Domecq Wines New Zealand, have had the foresight to steer themselves toward supply chain traceability ahead of legislative requirements.

For Allied Domecq Wines, traceability has become an essential element of its business processes, gearing the company up to not only comply with new European and U.S regulations, but also to translate its lead in end-to-end supply chain traceability into quantifiable market benefits.

Allied Domecq Wines now has the ability to trace a batch of handpicked grapes back to a parcel of vines, from a single row, picked on a particular day at a particular time. Such capabilities have become a key part of a broad quality strategy.

Capturing Vs. Sharing
Despite a growing focus on food safety, the adoption of traceability still appears to be limited. Much energy has been invested in technology for capturing data (RFID, barcoding and lab inspection systems, for example) rather than a method for sharing information.  

Businesses may have stand-alone systems to capture information, but not the ability to recall products instantly across an organization. Worse still are those using paper-based systems or manual spreadsheets.

Many companies have deemed the issue of how to meet tough new traceability requirements to be too difficult for them to tackle at this point, in spite of the fact that they will soon need to comply with impending regulations.

Delivering truly effective food tracking and tracing capability may have been “mission impossible” in the past, but that’s no longer the case. With recent advances in information technology, Lawson and IBM food traceability solutions offer companies new tracing capabilities. Lawson’s M3 Trace Engine is a configurable solution that enables disparate computer systems to deposit transactions into a single repository and provide Internet-based viewing capability that encompasses all stages in a supply chain including suppliers, transporters, customers or any other third party.  Lawson’s M3 solutions runs on the IBM System i, an easy-to-manage, secure and highly reliable alternative to Windows-based servers.

Boosting Confidence
The market has changed dramatically today, with a large proportion of consumers wanting to know as much as they can about the food products they purchase and consume. But, as consumers increasingly demand better information about the food they consume, there also is growing mistrust and decreased consumer confidence with food suppliers.

In fact, a recent survey by IBM of more than 1,600 consumers in the United States and the United Kingdom found that 35 percent of U.S. consumers do not believe that food manufacturers have consumers’ best interests in mind when handling recalls of contaminated food. In addition, one-third of respondents do not trust packaged food companies to develop and sell healthy products.

Several major corporations have recently been involved in large-scale, expensive marketing campaigns to rescue their image following contamination scares.

Traceability solutions hold great promise for consumer products businesses.

Not only will this technology safeguard the food supply and help companies comply with regulations, but also enable the credibility necessary to position new products and brands by delivering the information consumers demand and drive consumer confidence.

A good tracking and tracing system can be used as a powerful marketing tool as it strengthens a company’s ability to differentiate its products, thereby strengthening brand confidence and loyalty.

Looking into the future, it seems probable that factors such as changing consumer behavior and competitive market pressures are very likely to contribute to a shift in business attitudes to traceability.

From an operational perspective, businesses can also improve their bottom-line benefits through pinpoint accuracy in their supply chain management capabilities and better ability to meet consumer demands.

There is growing recognition across the industry that food and beverage companies can actually make significant gains in operational efficiency when they implement more transparent supply-side management processes.

Future Developments
We have only seen the beginning of this trend. Traceability is an issue that is still in its infancy, with many more developments likely to occur that will shift the way food and beverage businesses respond.

Innovative consumer products companies will seize the opportunity to rebuild trust and increase the return on their technology investments by expanding their perspective to encompass full value traceability.

Whatever the future might hold, traceability is certain to become a pivotal feature of many food and beverage industry processes in the years to come.

Annette Goulet is the IBM client executive for Lawson Alliance Sales, where she is responsible for sales and vertical alignment activities in the Americas. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it