Representatives of more than 30 companies from a broad cross section of the produce supply chain including retailers, foodservice buyers and produce suppliers have been appointed to serve on the steering committee of the Produce Traceability Initiative, an industry-led effort to enhance traceability throughout the supply chain. The initiative’s sponsor associations include United Fresh Produce Association (United Fresh),Produce Marketing Association (PMA), and Canadian Produce Marketing Association (CPMA). The steering committee is chaired by Cathy Green, chief operating officer of Food Lion, LLC.

The steering committee is developing an action plan to help the industry meet the need for greater progress in implementing a consistent whole-chain traceability solution.

Produce Traceability Initiative Steering Committee:

• 7 foodservice buyers: Amerifresh, Applebee’s International, Markon Cooperative, Inc., McDonald’s, Pro*Act, Sysco Corporation, U.S. Foodservice;
• 9 retail buyers: Food Lion, H-E-B, W. Newell & Co. (Supervalu), The Kroger Co., Loblaws, Safeway Stores, Inc., Schnuck Markets, Inc., Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Wegmans Food Markets; and
• 17 produce suppliers: AEPQ (Quebec Apple Packers), B.C. Tree Fruits Limited, Ballantine Produce Co., Inc., C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc., Dole Food Company, Inc., Domex Superfresh Growers, Driscoll’s, Duda Farm Fresh Foods, Inc., Fresh Express, Inc., Fresh Innovations, LLC., Frontera Produce, Ltd., Naturipe Farms, LLC., The Oppenheimer Group, Pandol Brothers, Inc., Ready Pac Produce, River Ranch Fresh Foods, LLC., and Tanimura & Antle.

The Committee has endorsed GS1 which is recognized and accessible worldwide, provides a code that can be readily incorporated into a UPC barcode and works with RFID or human readable codes. The Committee is encouraging companies to begin at case-level coding initially, paving the way toward item-level coding using the same set of standards. At present most companies have “internal” traceability programs, but not “external” traceability programs.

• Internal Traceability = confidential or proprietary data and processes companies use within their own span of operations to track/trace product.
• External Traceability = the data exchange and business processes that take place between trading partners to track/trace product.
• Whole-Chain Traceability = Internal + External traceability.

While companies need an internal traceability program to capture the details specific for their span of operation, they also need key data that serves as linkages for each industry member that handled the product (i.e. external traceability). These linkages will allow all of those companies who have handled the product to access their internal traceability programs and begin necessary investigations. Without both an internal traceability program and an external traceability program, we will not, as an industry, be able to effectively track and trace product up and down the supply chain.

In order that suppliers can ensure some consistency when assigning GTINs on cases the “GTIN Assignment Strategy” has been created specifically for this purpose. It uses standard product attributes of produce items to help organize and categorize products for GTIN assignment. Similarly, to ensure that one label can be used for the entire industry a standard case label template has also been created as a result of the GTIN Produce Pilot conducted in the fall of 2006.

Cliff Notes Produce Traceability Initiative Meetings

• June 12, 2008
• April 11, 2008
• February 22, 2008
• January 9, 2008