THE ROLE OF TRACEABILITY IN FOOD SAFETY

In recent years, regional food safety crises have impacted consumer trust in the products they buy from their local supermarket. These issues mean that the manufacturers of ready meals and frozen food, with the complexity of their products and the large number of raw ingredients, are under pressure to identify the source of all the materials used on their production lines to ensure optimum product safety and quality.

Traceability, using appropriate technology and data monitoring systems, play a key role in allowing manufacturers to meet these challenges, enabling them to fully understand the origins of all the raw materials used in their products. This means knowing not just wher the ingredients have come from, but also how they have been grown, such as whether organic methods have been used, or in the case of meat and animal products, what standards of husbandry they have been reared in.

Knowing and demonstrating such information is crucial to give interested end-consumers the confidence that the products they are buying are truly organic, or sourced from accredited farms and in what country. Furthermore, it also helps to ensure the safety of the products, demonstrating due diligence to regulators in the event of a product recall and showing that every measure possible has been taken to minimise the risk to the public.

In addition to the benefits to the brands reputation though, food manufacturers have a legal obligation to uphold stringent traceability requirements in order to comply with international food safety regulations. International manufacturers must conform to these clauses to retain access to these lucrative markets.

OVERCOMING TRACEABILITY BARRIERS

Despite the importance of optimum traceability on production lines, there remain a number of challenges that food manufacturers have to overcome to ensure they can follow their products correctly through their supply and distribution chains. The global food supply chain has become increasingly complicated over the last decade. For many multi-national manufacturers now, raw ingredients are sourced from one country, processed and packaged in a second, and sold by retailers in a third.

Adding further to this complexity, more and more safety regulations now require manufacturers to print the country of origin of the product on its packaging—usually the nation from which the raw ingredients have been sourced. This can be straightforward if all the raw ingredients come from a single country, but many ready meal products may well be made from ingredients sourced from multiple markets.

Manufacturers have to ensure that they have the infrastructure in place to keep track of product batches as they move through the supply chain. They also need to store and analyse batch information about the nature and provenance of ingredients, as well as data about foreign body contamination or product quality.

Code legibility and accuracy is another barrier to optimum product traceability. Codes need to be able to be read easily by track and trace equipment, which means that coding technology is required to be capable of precision printing on packaging at high speed so as not to impact on line throughput rate. To further optimise productivity, particularly on food lines that manufacture a range of products in short runs, and minimise the risk of incorrect codes being printed on product packaging, coding equipment needs to facilitate quick and easy product changeovers without compromising on production uptime.

In addition, harsh production or storage environments can have an impact on effective product traceability. For example, high airborne moisture has been known to cause problems with the adhesion of standard inks during printing, preventing them drying and making them prone to smudging, affecting the legibility of the finished code.

BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS

There are solutions available on the market now that are capable of overcoming the traditional challenges to effective product traceability. Traceability solutions that offer fully integrated production floor hardware and software systems can enable manufacturers to code each individual item within a batch, and then store the data about each coded product. This allows them to capture in-depth information about the movement of each product pack across their supply chain, optimising safety and quality control, as well as minimising the risk of products from unsafe sources reaching end consumers. The data can also be fed into business applications, including Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), to support manufacturers in analysing wher improvements can be made to their operations to optimise productivity.

To further enhance the efficiency and productivity of their operations, manufacturers can take advantage of coding systems that support production line flexibility. There are code assurance solutions, a subset of a strong traceability system, available that can integrate the coding printer with a centralised database, which allows machine operatives to selec from a vast number of saved codes during a product changeover, and enables them to set up multiple systems from a single location. In doing so, it minimises printer set-up time, while reducing the risk of coding errors. This boosts production uptime and productivity without compromising on coding precision and regulatory compliance.

For challenging production lines, manufacturers should opt for hardware specially designed for harsh environments that can resist  ink and dust build-up in the ink nozzles that can cause ordinary printers to shut down. Specialised inks provide scratch and rub resistance on flexible packaging, and offer extra adhesion to waxy substrates on packaging such as boxes, as well as on general purpose plastic packaging, minimising the risk of codes rubbing off or becoming illegible in transit.

By selecting such systems for their production lines, food manufacturers can overcome barriers to optimise traceability throughout their supply chain, ensuring they comply with legislation and reinforce consumer trust in their brand.