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 Highly-publicized
incidents of food-borne illness in the United States in recent years
have revealed that in spite of established industry practices for safely
packaging food, failures do occur, and food products sometimes become
contaminated.
The subject is addressed extensively in a new report on "traceability"
published by the Center for Agricultural Business. The CAB is a research
facility overseen by the California Agricultural Technology Institute at
California State University, Fresno.
In 2006, three people died, more than 100 were hospitalized and 200 more
estimated sickened in just one case of contaminated food, which turned
out to be packaged spinach tainted with E. coli bacteria. After
extensive investigation, researchers traced the spinach, which had been
sold all over the country, to production areas in the central coast
region of California.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that food
borne diseases cause approximately 76 million illnesses, 325,000
hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths in the United States each year. For
this reason and others, there is a clear need to improve methods for
tracking production and processing of food products.
According to Mechel Paggi, CAB director and one of the publication's
authors, traceability is "the accurate generation and recording of a
product's history, including all processes that transport or transform
it."
This involves tracking not only routine movement like packing, but the
mixing of lots, re-palletizing of cases, and even combining products in
food preparation, Paggi noted.
"Traceability systems must be able to provide a clear record of an
agricultural product, not only during production and packing, but in
distribution as well."
The title of the new report is "Traceability for Food Marketing and
Safety."
Its purpose is to provide an overview of the current state of
traceability systems in the specialty crop industry and to document to
the extent possible the cost and potential benefits to California
producers from adoption of these systems.
Unfortunately for some in the food production industry, a key reason for
a thorough traceability system is that it provides information needed to
assess liability in cases of contaminated products. Actually, sources
referenced in the report indicate that the number of liability claims
that go to court over food-borne illness is very small compared to the
overall number of cases. However, publicity and lawsuits over individual
cases can severely damage an entire industry and can devastate a single
company that is found to have made a mistake.
With that reality acknowledged, the benefits of traceability in food
production systems are many and will help the industry in general, even
though it raises the price of product, Paggi noted. One benefit is
improved ability to identify and recall a product when a food safety
problem is discovered. Not only does this help to correct problems that
have occurred, it helps to protect and maintain the integrity of the
industry as a whole when it can identify and correct problem areas.
Other benefits include the ability to guarantee product origin when that
information is important to the consumer; improvement in overall supply
management; and ability to differentiate between domestically and
foreign supplied products.
Since traceability is a still growing industry in its own right, work
needs to be done in applying it to the various facets of the food
production, processing and distribution, Paggi said. The new report is
aimed primarily at economists and consultants who work in developing and
testing systems. It includes several sections, including one of
theoretical underpinnings and another featuring the "California
Experience."
For a copy of the publication, contact CAB at 559.278.4405 or visit the
CAB Website at
http://cati.csufresno.edu/cab.
(Copy by Steve Olson of the California
Agricultural Technology Institute at Fresno State.)
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