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The
Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) first found the problem in
Quebec, followed quickly by the United States Food and Drug
Administration (FDA).
This is not merely a cautionary tale.
Many people are sick and have been hospitalized. Still, the president
of Honduras, Manuel
Zelaya, ate a Honduran
melon on CNN, attempting to show it was safe, and tried to reverse the
onus by arguing American officials should prove the seriousness of the
problem rather than force Honduras to disprove the problem.
This reveals a complete lack of understanding of the most basic
principles of food safety on the president’s part. Even if eating these
melons has a lower risk of illness than getting struck by lightning,
the big question is why couldn’t Honduran and Costa Rican officials
isolate the problem. Don’t they have the ability to trace product back
to its field of origin?
This is a case where merely
identifying the country of origin and knowing the rough date of harvest
doesn’t cut it. Consumers have little “appetite” for risk. Building
confidence in the food we eat, just like building a brand, is the sole
responsibility of the seller.
That’s why corporations and
governments the world over speak loftily of the need for food
“traceability” which can enable a food recall based on a lot numbering
system and an audit trail. The idea is to limit exposure to risk by
isolating problems. The more accurate the traceability, the less the
exposure. A lot of taxpayer money is being poured into improving the
traceability standards of modern food-exporting economies.
But how does traceability differ from the related but distinct concept of traceback that was developed by William
Kanitz and his staff at ScoringAg and
ScoringContainers, divisions of ScoringSystem Inc.
Traceability, in theory and in practice, is a first step towards the
much more accurate and beneficial full traceback system. Arcane food
companies and food-exporting countries that lack accurate lot numbering
should get with the times and develop a traceability system before it’s
too late or their tardiness will eventually result in a recall like the
one above. But should one then go beyond this first step?
Think of it like this. If you think you’re merely susceptible to food
safety issues, then basic traceability might do the trick; but if
you’re vulnerable to such issues, full traceback becomes essential.
Honduras and Costa Rica had
Eurogap
certification, which includes strict and highly bureaucratic
traceability standards. They also had certification from private
certifiers which required third-party verification that their
traceability was at least functioning. And yet they couldn’t isolate
the source of the contamination, which meant a full-blown recall was
necessary. The problem could have been as simple as a single employee
failing to wash his hands, but for lack of full traceback, two national
economies will suffer.
Traceability means you’re at least trying, while traceback means you can. ScoringAg and
ScoringContainers
works in seconds through a fully automated, global-locating, real-time
audit trail that resides on a secure database, accessible anywhere in
the world through the internet.
Traceback results from
embracing traceability, not merely as a bureaucratic regulatory
requirement, but as an investment in your company brand or national
reputation. It goes to the limits of technology and provides item-level
traceability right down to every package, or in this case, every box of
melons, from the retail store back to the producer, covering all
warehousing, shipping, storage, harvest and employee data in between.
There are many traceability “solutions” available in the world today,
but only ScoringAg allows for the uncomplicated accounting of all
information pertinent to the integrity of food destined for human
consumption.
The fact of the matter is that even the FDA
doesn’t have the manpower to dive into manual audit trails, even when
such trails are supported by electronic audit trails on computers in
the country of origin. Many companies grappling with traceability dream
of reducing their sample-recall time from days to hours, but ScoringAg
reduces it to minutes, even in the case of actual-recall time.
Is testing a solution? Not after the fact it isn’t. There’s a lot of
demand to start testing value-added crops such as certified organic in
order to prevent fraud and negligence (go to isitorganic.ca for more
info). Nothing’s worse than paying extra for something and wondering if
you’re really getting what you’re paying for. But the case above isn’t
about value-added food; just regular, everyday products that anyone
might buy.
While random, unannounced, quality control
testing should be part of a company’s, or a nation’s, traceback system,
it can’t prevent what happened in Honduras and Costa Rica. In short,
even with a hundred times the manpower, the CFIA and FDA had no choice
but to play it safe and recall all the melons. And now the hard-working
farmers of Honduras and Costa Rica will pay a very dear price.
Conclusion: Traceability is a buzzword. Traceback is the ideal.
Sound expensive? It’s only pennies per data entry. For more information visit ScoringAg or
ScoringContainers.
Written by
Mischa
Popoff, B.A. (Hon.)
Osoyoos, BC Canada
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