ReposiTrak sets up consortium on US food traceability

Food supply chain specialist ReposiTrak is setting up a consortium with the aim of developing an open, low-cost approach to food tracing technology.

The invite-only group of food retailers, wholesalers and suppliers has been set up in response to the FDA’s proposals for ‘farm-to-table’ traceability across the US food industry. The agency has held three public meetings on the proposed rule, and took comments until February 22.

The goal of the Food Traceability Leadership Consortium (FTLC) is to “create and execute a collaborative plan to deploy food shipment track and trace technology and prepare the industry for any potential changes” to the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), which mandated the traceability requirements.

The proposed FSMA regulations require capturing batch/lot and similar shipment level data for a wide variety of fresh produce, seafood and dairy products as they move through the supply chain.

“This is a massive data management challenge as it represents thousands of products, tens of thousands of locations and millions of critical tracking events in a near daily basis,” says ReposiTrak.

“Cumbersome label and scan approaches involving manpower and process changes will be economically and operationally unsustainable at this scale of activity.”