YOUR INDUSTRY
TAKING TRACEABILITY TO THE NEXT LEVEL Words by Glenys Christian
Guidelines from the three-year United Fresh Traceability Project are due to be published before Horticulture New Zealand’s 2021 conference in early August. And according to United Fresh project director, AnneMarie Arts, it is one of the most important projects she has been involved in during her horticultural career. “The absolute cooperation received from all participants along the supply chain has contributed to a very robust tool that will significantly improve our industry’s level of traceability achievements,” she said.
With the incidence rate of foodborne illnesses attributed to fresh produce steadily rising worldwide, the need for an effective and workable traceability system that helps prevent and reduce such incidents was increased Ineffective or absent traceability systems can present severe problems for both consumers and industry. In New Zealand the dairy industry whey protein scare over botulism in 2013, and the traceability challenges which followed, highlighted the need for effective industry systems throughout fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) categories including fresh produce. With the incidence rate of food-borne illnesses attributed to fresh produce steadily rising worldwide, the need for an effective and workable traceability system that helps prevent and reduce such incidents was increased. There is risk of an impact, domestically and in export markets, as severe as that of the dairy industry incident, or potentially even greater. Transparency of the traceability process was also becoming an increasingly urgent requirement for supply chains from a consumer perspective. Consumers have no trust in a system’s outputs if they have no confidence in the system itself. So any traceability system must also be transparent to consumers, to enable them to accept the accuracy of such a system’s outputs. 26
NZGROWER : MAY 2021
A lack of system transparency will reduce trust in the entire supply chain, with impacts seen in uptake and effectiveness. Transparency helps maintain customer and consumer confidence in the upstream supply chain, underpinning their reasonable expectation that all food reaching them is safe. Traceability is also growing in importance as a mechanism linking domestic and international food supply chains. Currently traceability in the New Zealand domestic fresh produce supply chain is not working to a common standard. Every produce supply chain in this country varies in its management of internal and external traceability, with the latter working well in some cases, or not at all in extreme situations. In 2018 pan-industry body United Fresh was successful in applying for a Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures Fund (SFFF) project to examine the gaps in traceability locally and develop a set of guidelines tailored to the New Zealand industry. This project was led by United Fresh through its technical advisory group and managed by The AgriChain Centre, with technical guidance on international traceability system standards by GS1 New Zealand. There were also cash and/or in-kind contributions from these organisations as well as from Strawberry Growers NZ, Vegetables NZ and Foodstuffs North Island.
Transparency helps maintain customer and consumer confidence in the upstream supply chain, underpinning their reasonable expectation that all food reaching them is safe In June last year following the initial supply chain pilot studies in 2018 and 2019, United Fresh released a set of draft guidelines for industry feedback and consultation. The feedback received was incorporated into the final version of the industry traceability guidelines, to be made public within the next three months.
