Food safety, traceability and sustainability blog

Understanding Traceability Events

Capturing and storing the right supply chain event data can help companies visualize their entire supply chain and achieve tech-enabled traceability. Stitching together product and ingredient events at the batch-lot level can increase transparency, reduce time to locate tainted products and minimize waste from withdrawals and product extractions.

Participants in the global food system need to speak the same language in order to reap these benefits. And, in recognition of this need, efforts are being made across the industry to build connections between stakeholders to enable interoperability, while standards bodies and regulators are also seeking to normalize food traceability data elements and practices. Understanding food traceability events is the key to understanding where the industry is headed in terms of supply chain modernization and transparency, specifically the evolution of two key concepts: Critical Tracking Events (CTEs) and Key Data Elements (KDEs).

FoodLogiQ Achieves Food Traceability Milestone, Capturing Over 50 Million Critical Tracking Events on the Connect Platform

FoodLogiQ sees one hundred percent growth in critical event data captured on the Connect Platform in 2020. Learn more about FoodLogiQ’s connected supply chain and the power of tech-enabled traceability.

FoodLogiQ is thrilled to announce that we have captured over 50 Million Critical Tracking Events (CTEs) on the FoodLogiQ Connect platform, a major milestone in achieving a connected food chain fueled by supply chain digitization at scale.

The number of Critical Tracking Events within FoodLogiQ Connect has doubled since the end of 2019, when FoodLogiQ reported nearly 26 million Critical Tracking Events on the platform. Additional statistics paint an even more vivid picture of how the platform is realizing a connected food chain, with over 520,000 quality incidents detected and over 260,000 supplier documents processed, across more than 130,000 locations globally. With the number of new events captured increasing by over three million events month-over-month in November alone, the FoodLogiQ community has become a central player in establishing farm-to-fork traceability within the food system.

Exploring the Power of Traceability at the Distribution Solutions Conference

The Distribution Solutions Conference (DSC) conference took place this week, an annual conference produced by the International Foodservice Distributors Association (IFDA). IFDA is an authoritative voice for food distributors, an essential tenet of the food industry: “With a combined annual sales volume of over $300 billion, foodservice distributors are vital drivers of the American economy. IFDA Member Companies play a critical role in the foodservice industry supply chain, delivering food and other products to more than one million professional kitchens every day.”

The First 100 Days of the New Era of Smarter Food Safety

The FDA hosted a webinar this week taking a retrospective look at the first 100 days of the New Era of Smarter Food Safety, in addition to exploring how the initiative and blueprint will continue to build towards its key goals.

FDA Deputy Commissioner Frank Yiannas led the event, which brought visibility into the two-year roadmap for the agency, and underscored how progress that has already been made fits into the FDA’s broader strategic approach to food safety and technological advancements in the food system, since the New Era of Smarter Food Safety Blueprint was published.

Defining Traceability in the New Era

What do we mean when we talk about traceability? As the industry moves beyond one-up-one-back product tracking, how will we define and standardize transparency within the food system?

As food quality and safety standards evolve, so too do the concepts driving industry innovation. Understanding food traceability, in particular, has been a moving target for years as expectations around transparency between supply chain partners continues to evolve. However, with the FDA’s recent release of proposed FSMA 204 enhanced traceability requirements, consensus is being built around what food traceability means in the New Era of Smarter Food Safety.