Taking traceability to the next level

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. 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.

The guidelines consist of three sections: laying out the case for traceability, the guidelines themselves, and work instructions to help businesses follow the traceability process to a common standard. Dr Hans Maurer, chair of the United Fresh technical advisory group, said the key learning for the project team related to the improvements needed to strengthen traceability. “Effective and efficient traceability can only be based on a high degree of interoperability between supply chain partners,” he said. This is fast becoming a baseline necessity to achieve the rapid reactivity increasingly expected by regulatory authorities. Work on the project is winding up over the next few months with the guidelines to be made available in both printed as well as electronic form.

SIX POINTERS FROM THE PROJECT

The traceability project found that:

1 Growers collect a substantial amount of data to support their business operations. 2 They have demonstrated that significant traceability information is available from the work carried out during the on farm production and post-harvest processes. 3 The traceability challenges experienced by the produce industry along the supply chain are not based on the lack of data, but on the incompatibility that typically exists between the information management systems in use along the supply chain. 4 A robust traceability system does not necessarily require significant investments into technology, as at the most basic level such a system can be paper-based. 5 Regardless of whether a system is paper-based or operates at the other end of the continuum through providing semi-automatically generated

Blockchain entries, “one-up, one-down” external traceability works at its best when all parties are adhering to a common standard. 6 Traceability does not work without an underpinning standard that enables participants in a supply chain to recognise and move electronic data related to physical product, parallel to moving the product itself. Horticulture New Zealand Notice of the 16th

Annual General Meeting

Friday 6 August 2021 at 7.30am , Mystery Creek, Hamilton

Business

1 Welcome and Apologies 2 Voting and Proxies 3 Obituaries 4 Approve Minutes of the 15th AGM 5 President’s and Chief Executive’s Report on

HortNZ’s Activities 6 Approve Audited Financial Statements for year ended 31 March 2021 7 Levy Rate 8 Director Remuneration 9 Approve 2021/22 Budget 10 Approve Auditors for 2021/22 11 Notices of Motion 12 General Business

Call for Notices of Motion

Any Board Member, Affiliated Organisation or Active Grower Member wishing to have a matter considered at the AGM must give notice in writing to the Chief Executive of Horticulture New Zealand of the notice of motion no later than Friday, 18 June 2021 at 5.00pm. Notices should include the wording of the motion to be voted on and up to one A4 page of explanatory notes. Notices of motions will be listed on HortNZ’s website www.hortnz.co.nz on 25 June 2021 and will feature in the HortNZ magazines (July issue).