Traceability is a concept that has gained importance in the agri-food industry in recent years. Nowadays, everyone involved in the production, processing, and sale of fruits and vegetables, using machinery like ours, must take into account the legislation related to food traceability.
Linked to product quality, its origin, and the work of producers, an increasing number of end consumers are concerned about understanding what food traceability is and considering it when making purchases.
This directly affects the interest of production companies. All professionals involved in the production chain of fruits and vegetables—or any other type of food—strive to know everything necessary about this concept.
It is not very complex to define what food traceability is. In a very simple way, it can be described as a control system that is carried out on any food item from its origin to its point of sale.
It can be defined as a map that includes its point of origin and the person responsible for cultivation or breeding, the harvest date, the processes it has undergone—such as washing, cutting, or calibrating in the case of Aitenet machines—when it was packaged, the transportation method, and the temperature at which the food has been maintained throughout this process.
This product life history is regulated by Article 3 of Regulation 178/2002 of January 28 of the European Economic Community. Since that initial legal text, an entire regulatory framework has been developed that specifies how food data should be recorded.
Why is food traceability so important? This detailed report of a product’s entire life allows for the tracking of any box of cut broccoli, bag of potatoes, or any other product, regardless of where it is in the sales process, even if it has already reached consumers’ homes.
In the case of food alerts due to contamination, authorities can act much faster in removing the product from the market. Furthermore, traceability ensures the quality of food, as producers and processors engaged in illegal activities can be quickly identified and held accountable.
All data related to a food item’s life must be reflected in its labeling, which provides access to real-time updated databases with a single goal: improving the population’s food safety.
Currently, there are various methods for marking packaging or products. The most commonly used methods are barcodes and RFID technology.
Thanks to digitalization, software can quickly read these codes and provide access to all necessary information.
The government, through the technicians of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food, is responsible for monitoring food production and processing and identifying incidents. In these cases, a food alert is issued to identify batches produced in the same facility, by the same producer, etc., and to swiftly remove them from the market to minimize risk.
There are three types of food traceability used in our country and in most of the European Community: backward traceability, internal or process traceability, and forward traceability.
This information looks back to the product’s origin, particularly related to raw material suppliers. For example, it would include information about the potatoes that arrive from the field to processing centers equipped with our washing, peeling, and cutting machinery.
In these cases, information about the supplier, the product’s place of origin, and what was done with it in the workplace—storage conditions, refrigeration, etc.—is included.
What processes were carried out with the food? Cutting, washing, calibrating… The machinery used, the temperatures to which complex preparations were exposed—all of these elements fall under internal traceability.
As you can imagine, this type of traceability reflects what happens from when the product leaves the factory packaged until it reaches the end customer: the point of sale, the recommended consumption date, the warehouse it was dispatched from, and the shipment batch or date.
These are the main points that professionals in the agri-food sector need to consider regarding food traceability. It is a demanding regulation that includes significant penalties for non-compliance, so a deep understanding of the details and adherence to these protocols are key to the success of companies.
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