Over the last year members of the FoodTRACE team have had the opportunity to visit numerous facilities in various phases of the produce industry. We have been to grower/shippers, consolidators, terminal markets, foodservice operations, retail operations and processors of varying sizes.
One of the purposes for the visits, in every case, was to determine various companies current capabilities when it came to traceability. Every single company that we visited was capable of tracing a product in their system both forward and backwards (one-step-up, one-step-down) as required by the Bio-Terrorism Act of 2002. Most were capable of doing that in under 15 minutes but certainly all were more than capable of doing it within the requirments of the act of 24 hours. Two shippers, in tracing back to the grower, were able to also identify indepth to the crew and time of day that the product was packed. One traceback even went to a grower location, crew and time frame in Mexico.
This reaffirms our consensus that traceability is well entrenched in many companies currently. What is lacking is the full pedigree accessibility as is being discussed in the Food Enhancement Act of 2009, now being discussed in Congress. For example, although many of "links" in the flow of a product might be able to access the traceability in minutes, being able to see the whole picture, both backwards and forwards, is what would really make traceability complete. This is what FoodTRACE offers as only a part of its benefits to members.
The true effectiveness of any program, ours included, is the level of participation. That is why the cost structure has been developed so that literally EVERY facility as defined by the government could afford our program. It is designed so that the smallest of companies can pay as little as $100 per month for ALL of the benefits of the FoodTRACE program. There are NO other expenses, we simply require companies take the data they currently already have, in the format they already use, in tracking their one-step-up, one-step-down information, and electronically transmit that to us.
If a company is so small that all of their reporting is on paper only, FoodTRACE will even provide a computer!
Although the more facilities that register certainly provide more of the full pedigree traceability, each company, as soon as information is being provided, is under the FoodTRACE umbrella and FoodTRACE will monitor any potential problems reported at a government level and companies will know if they need to be aware or if they are not implicated in any potential event. That is only one of the benefits provided by FoodTRACE. To see additional benefits and features of the program, please visit http://www.usfoodtrace.com/ or email us any questions you may have to info@www.usfoodtrace.com.
While there is certainly NO legal requirement for any company to do anything OTHER than follow the Bio-Terrorism Act of 2002 at this time, all facets, features, nuances and concepts being discussed in Congress are all currently covered by the FoodTRACE program and more.
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