Packaging

Anuga FoodTec: Quality Assurance and Food Safety

Thursday 12. March 2009 - Transparent food - seamless systems provide continuous traceability along the entire value chain

Held from 10th to 13th March 2009, the fifth edition of Anuga FoodTec is once again the world’s only specialist trade fair for the international food industry that focuses on all the key issues of food production – from processing and packing to hygiene, storage and distribution. Irrespective of the food industry sector or the raw materials and process segments involved, the issues of quality, safety and traceability are all of paramount importance. After all, a frozen pizza completes quite a journey before it eventually lands on the consumer’s plate, passing through numerous stages in the course of production, processing and sales. If customers are to be able to rely on the quality and safety of the food products they buy, continuous checks must be conducted at all the various processing stages.

At the same time, EU Regulation No. 178/2002 lays down strict rules on food safety. These cover standards for not only hygiene and shelf life but also complete product traceability, all the way from the retailer to the manufacturer and back to the ultimate producer.

However, the documentation that is required by the EU relates only to the immediate supplier, one step up, and the direct purchaser, one step down the value chain, respectively. In order to be able to ensure complete traceability all along the value chain, the individual companies must have access to information about the stages immediately before and after them. The combination of these individual pieces of information guarantees the continuous traceability required by the EU regulation. In principle, it would be possible to meet this requirement simply by collating, in a paper-based system, all the relevant orders, dockets and customer invoices. But even though there is no obligation to record such data on a computer, producers like to be able to see, in effect at the press of a button, which supplier has delivered which product made of which raw materials to which retailer. Yet the establishment of a database that can provide traceability all the way from the supermarket shelf practically to the farmer’s field presents tremendous challenges, primarily to the IT infrastructure that is in use at the companies.

Coordinating complex tasks with IT
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) offers an ideal way of coordinating data and processes within a company. The latest ERP systems in the food industry cover a broad spectrum of tasks, ranging from supply chain management to customer relationship management, as well as integrating all of these within a uniform database. All the relevant data regarding the production process, from the arrival of the raw materials to the recipe, processing and packaging of the product, are continuously recorded and updated in the system. This covers not only the filling and packaging machines but all the peripheral process systems as well. The data are recorded directly at the plant during the production process, e.g. by means of industrial PCs with online links to weighing scales and flow meters.

A key aspect of traceability is the management of recipes. This means that a manufacturer of baked goods, for example, is able to look in the ERP system and see exactly how much flour, water or dried fruit has been used in the production of, say, a stollen cake. The example of raisins will explain how the system works. Following delivery, the raisins are initially kept in a silo, which is automatically assigned a batch number by the system. In this way, the producer is able to show which raisins were delivered when and to which order they belong. The system automatically retains the number of the silo but also assigns a new one to the dried-fruit mixture for which the raisins are used. The container in which the mixture is stored is likewise assigned a number. Moving back up the chain, it is therefore possible to trace – via the numbers assigned in the system to the storage container, the dried-fruit mixture and the silo – the origin of the raisins in the mixture. This process also benefits quality assurance, since all the information about the ingredients in the process is precisely documented and can therefore be readily verified.

From producer to consumer – the barcode
The label – which carries all this information – must be able to survive all the various stages along the value chain and accompany the product all the way to the consumer. This complete traceability of food products from one company to the next is underpinned by the worldwide use of the EAN standards for the identification of goods and services. The labelling process begins as soon as the raw materials arrive at the processing plant. At this point, all the information pertaining to the delivery is recorded and assigned a batch number, after which a label containing all the relevant data is generated. The data are expressed in both plaintext and encoded form in conformity with the EAN barcode standard. The label is either affixed immediately to the product or to the packaging or transport pallet. A scanning of this label will guarantee a clear record of the product. The article number, dates and a host of other information are available there for data storage and further processing.

Traceability with RFID tags?
In recent times, a four-letter acronym has been mentioned with increasing frequency in connection with traceability: RFID – i.e. radio frequency identification. Using this technology, objects can be automatically identified by means of information transmitted via radio waves. An RFID system consists of a transponder, a reading device and a supporting IT system. The transponder can be affixed to the object or its packaging, for example, or fully integrated into the latter. The data stored in the transponder is transmitted via radio without the need for any physical or sight contact with the object. RFID tags are already in use at dairies for various tasks such as labelling the containers of fruit concentrates for yoghurts. Stored on the tags is precise information detailing how much of the contents has been removed, and when. Because these containers hold up to 1,000 litres, they are never emptied in one go, but rather in batches. Before the introduction of RFID tags, this meant that they were frequently returned to the supplier still containing substantial quantities of concentrate.

In essence, RFID tags are ideal for ensuring the seamless and accurate traceability of a product along the entire commodity chain in “real time”. At present, however, costs are still too high to permit a universal use of this technology. Even more importantly, there is still insufficient global standardization, and therefore food retailers and the food industry do not see any additional benefits in this technology compared to the EAN barcode. These drawbacks notwithstanding, RFID technology is set to become more and more firmly established in the coming years, when it will create new opportunities for integrating and monitoring the flow of goods.

Anuga FoodTec will be taking a close look at the topic of traceability as part of its special show “Auto-ID/RFID”. Anuga FoodTec is jointly organised by Koelnmesse GmbH and the German Agricultural Society (DLG). It will run from 10th to 13th March 2009 in Halls 4-10 of the Koelnmesse exhibition centre.