For several years, the IDDBA and over a dozen other food associations have been addressing gaps in traceability. These gaps include missing information on products that goes in and out of stores, violations of the Bioterrorism Act and weaknesses in the document trail (bills of lading, purchase orders, invoices).

The goal is to create a single product tracing process that supports all categories of fresh foods, starting with produce and including dairy, deli, meat, poultry, supermarket foodservice, and bakery categories. This is done by using existing standards already prevalent in the retail and foodservice community, allowing industry members to keep their existing internal traceability systems, using existing information already available in the industry and using existing technologies. At this time, preliminary indications are that the FDA will be using the basic principles of the Produce Traceability Initiative as the model to begin discussion on tracing product back to the case level. The next step will be to do item-level and co-mingled product traceability. Join John Sullivan, President of Norseland, Inc., and president of the IDDBA, as he reviews this important industry initiative.

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Traceability: Closing The Gaps
John Sullivan, President of Norseland, Inc., and president of the IDDBA

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