Home > Traceability of foods and foodborne hazards

Definitions of traceability:

‘Traceability’ means the ability to trace and follow a food, feed, food-producing animal or substance intended to be, or expected to be incorporated into a food or feed, through all stages of production, processing and distribution.

Traceability downstream in food chain means the ability to trace the products in question, e.g. defective or contaminated products, easily from the production chain and to find all necessary information regarding the process from the beginning to the end, to be able to find the sites where contamination/failure has happened.

Traceability can be divided to contractor, customer and process traceability.

Contractor: The ability to know the contractors of all the ingredients and packaging materials.

Customer: The ability to know the delivery of the products one step forward in the delivery chain or farthest to the final consumer.

Process: The ability to follow the manufacture of ingredients and materials into a product.

Benefits obtained from good traceability practice:

Traceability is a preventive, necessary, supplement of food safety systems, which increases the efficiency of food company, when used correctly. In practise traceability means collection, documentation, maintenance and application of information related to all processes in the supply chain, which guarantees for the consumers the information on origin and life history of a product.

Traceability is about collecting relevant information and using it to visualize, improve and optimize the operational processes in a food processing plant.

Traceability is needed:

• In controlling crisis situations and in enabling bounded withdrawals
• In delivering precise information to consumers and controlling authorities
• For safety of consumers, products hazardous to health can be withdrawn quickly from the market
• For safety of operatives; faults can be found and corrected quickly
• For information acquisition of authorities
• For prevention of unnecessary big market disturbances.

Benefits and applications of traceability are the following:

• Increase of customer and consumer confidence
• Regulatory compliance
• Demonstrable integrity of food supply chain
• Minimization of and transfer of risks
• Promotion of best allocation of responsibilities
• Facilitation of internal controls
• Validation and resolving of complaints
• Facilitation of effective product recalls.

Traceability systems:

Characteristics and requirements of systems

Traceability systems are constructions, which enable traceability. There are six essential elements of traceability constituting an integrated agricultural and food supply chain traceability system. These elements are:

1. Product traceability – defines the physical location of a product at any stage in the supply chain.
2. Process traceability – ascertains the type of activities that have affected the product during the growing and post harvest operations (what, where and when).
3. Genetic traceability – determines the genetic composition of the product and includes information on the type and origin (source, supplier).
4. Inputs traceability – determines type and origin (source, supplier) of inputs, e.g. fertilizers, additives used for preservation or transformation of the raw materials into processed products.
5. Disease and pest traceability – traces the epidemiology of microbiological hazards and pests, which may contaminate food products.
6. Measurement traceability – relates individual measurement results through calibrations to reference standards and assures the quality of measurements by observing various factors which may have impact on results (such as environmental factors, operator etc.).

Basic requirement for traceability is, that products are properly labelled. The product flow and a basic traceability based on bar codes.

Building a traceability system:

A product traceability system must take the production process into account and record product life along the supply chain and through both production activities and movement or storage activities (“Product routing”). The data accuracy and reliability required and also cost guide the selection of the traceability’s tools.

When starting to build a traceability system, it should be considered, what and why is traced. This should be done by performing a detailed hazard or risk analysis and this task could be included into hazard identification part of HACCP-system. In building a traceability system, the following roadmap can be followed:

• Draw a flow chart of the product supply chain, from farm to plate and include sources of material inputs (e.g. ingredients).
• Name a responsible person who is also responsible of product quality.
• Conduct a hazard analysis of the supply chain using HACCP principles.
• Document the reasons for embarking on the traceability of the products.
• Write down which data must be recorded and traced back at each step in the supply chain.
• Specify the responsible persons for collecting and recording the data.
• Develop a unique labelling system or bar code for easy identification of the product.
• Document how the trace-back is to be carried out (include a diagram).
• Test, validate and verify the traceability system.
• Document all decisions and actions.

Methods used in traceability investigations:

The methods in analyzing the origin of foodstuffs can be categorized into two types: the physicochemical techniques (using the variation of the radioactive isotope content of the product, spectroscopy, pyrolysis or electronic nose) and biological techniques (using the analysis of total bacterial flora through many techniques such as Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis (DGGE) or DNA chips). Methods permitting the analysis of the microenvironment of food are very promising. They are based on the principle that the environment has an effect on the bacterial ecology of food. The bacteria can differ by their quantity, species and characteristics. These methods include traditional biochemical techniques and molecular biological techniques. The main problem in all these techniques is the need of data banks containing representatives of various origins.

On-line methods

There is a growing need for use of real-time sensors for quality and safety assurance in food industry. Physical and chemical properties can be measured with sensors, such as electronic nose. This technology is based on absorption and the desorption of volatile chemical substances. The detection system can be composed of gas sensors or a mass spectrography together with statistical processing system for classification of the odours. Electronic nose is used in various applications e.g. in the determination of the origin of olive oil and orange. Biosensors have a biological identification part, such as antibodies, cells, reseptors or nucleic acids. E.g. enzyme sensors have been developed for on-line monitoring of disinfection processes in the food industry and for detection of diacetyl in beer. In the future, biosensors will most probably be used for various use, e.g. detection of mycotoxins, bacteriocides, allergens or contaminating microbes. By now, there are no commercial applications of biosensors used for detection of residues or contaminants. A few methods used on analyzing product composition are available. As industrial applications, the costs of biosensors should be reasonable and the results should be available fast and they should additionally be easy to use.

Traceability of allergens:

A compound causing immune reaction in body is called antigen and antigen causing the allergic reaction allergen. Even the smallest amount of allergen can cause problems and almost any food can cause allergy or symptoms of hypersensitivity. e.g. the following substances and their derivatives typically cause hypersensitivity reactions: grain products containing gluten, fish, crustaceans, eggs, peanuts, soya, milk and milk products containing lactose, nuts, celery, mustard, sesame seeds and sulfites. All ingredients in food products must have been marked onto the package with a few exceptions (exceptions do not include any allergens).

Traceability of pathogenic microbes:

For tracing contamination routes of microbes, various molecular microbiological methods based on analysing genotype and phenotype of a microbe can be used. With these methods can be traced, from which products are found corresponding microbes that were found from patient samples or from which process steps can be found microbes corresponding those found from the products. For each microbe, best method for typing varies and should be selected. Methods based on analysing phenotypes include biotyping, serotyping, phage- or bacteriocin typing.

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