LAS VEGAS—Consumers are interested in sustainability, and thus, so are many product manufacturers. However, manufacturers should not overlook how traceability is key to a sustainability program, said Amanda Josey, Ph.D., strategic marketing and business development manager, BASF Human Nutrition, North America. Not only can traceability help boost sustainability, it can help a company avoid financial loss due to a recall, enhance its brand, enhance customer trust, avoid legal consequences of a recall, reduce the risk of a recall and create differentiation.
At SupplySide West, Josey said in 2050, more than 9 billion people will live on this planet; today, the world has 7 billion. To provide a quality of life for the increased people, we will need to increase our food production by 70 percent. Maintaining current resources use would require 2.5 planets in 2050. With this increased strain, she said it’s important for companies to put traceability programs in place today, so that good products do not get wasted due to the time it takes to get information regarding recalls.
Today, recalls are on the rise. In about 2008, food recalls grew due to globalization, more complex supply chains and consumer awareness in recalls. Consumers are concerned with ingredients that are healthful and safe, feel that food-related recalls have increased, and are more concerned about food safety than five years ago. During a food safety scare, she said consumers trust media more than companies and regulators. With an appropriate traceability program, product manufacturers can change that around and become the trusted source.
Done properly, companies can use traceability as a differentiation and marketing tool. Traceability can also increase sustainability by quickly pinpointing a problem area, allowing a company to reduce the amount of product loss during a contamination.
Today, most companies that deal with food and supplements must have a process to track items coming in and leaving the organization. These tools include batch numbers and bar codes. However, these internal programs have limitations, including the fact that most companies are only able to trace “one up and one down" the supply chain. This means it could take several weeks to find out where a potential contamination occurred.
With external traceability, there is a link of traceable items that allows each member of the supply chain to keep its own proprietary data. The biggest concern is that companies don’t want to share their data with everyone in the supply chain. To avoid giving up proprietary information, companies can link using unique identifiers set up at the batch level so the only information shared is a set of numbers. This can facilitate a fast response time and increase accuracy with electronic systems.
Josey explained that BASF uses GTNet ® from TraceTracker, a suite of tools that allows a company to keep intellectual property (IP) while being traceable.
Josey has spent several years engaged in the field of sustainability for various divisions of BASF. Most recently, she has utilized BASF’s internal capabilities in sustainability to help brand owners and retailers create more sustainable products with a unique program called the S.E.T. Initiative. Josey is also a member of the advisory board on the Institute of Food Technologists’ Traceability Improvement Initiative. She earned her doctorate in chemistry from North Carolina State University.
