The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently published its Food Traceability Final Rule, which introduces new recordkeeping requirements for all participants in the supply chain of certain foods. In our latest blog, we discuss what this means for food and beverage manufacturers.
A total of 48 million people in the U.S. get sick from food-borne diseases every year, according to alarming statistics by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Systematic tracking of certain types of food along the supply chain can help significantly in reducing that number.
Effective traceability allows for quick removal of contaminated food from the market, thereby minimizing risk of illness and dramatically cutting business costs.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently published its Food Traceability Final Rule, which introduces new recordkeeping requirements for all participants in the supply chain of certain foods. Those include different types of fruit, vegetables, cheese, and fish, among others outlined on FDA’s Food Traceability List.
Food creators and processors have long been subject to regular FDA audits. But up until recently there was no such clearcut set of traceability rules for food shippers.
The lack of concrete guidelines inevitably resulted in gaps in distributors’ recordkeeping and therefore impacted the speed and effectiveness of potential recalls.
The FDA’S new rule has been introduced to fill those gaps and is expected to greatly improve the food tracking process.
A key requirement under the new FDA rules is the presence of a traceability code that is to be passed on to each link of the supply chain. The code should also tie back to all reference documents associated with the specific food shipment.
The traceability code typically used for such purposes is referred to as the lot number – a unique identification label assigned to a specific production batch.
Lot tracking is an increasingly popular practice in inventory management. It allows companies to scan and store information about any specific batch, including its location in the warehouse, the date it was received, and the supplier it was purchased from.
Prior to FDA’s latest set of traceability rules, certain food market participants were subject to the “one step forward, one step back” approach, meaning they had to be able to provide detailed information about the party they received a batch from and whoever they passed it on to.
This, however, would only give an auditor limited information and fail to achieve “cradle- to-grave” traceability, which is often needed for actions such as recalls to take place.
Lot tracking, on the other hand, makes it possible to access not only details about the lot’s journey through the supply chain, but also any relevant documentation such as invoices to certificates of approval (CoA).
Below is a list of the key data elements (KDEs) that shippers of food are now required to provide in a case of an FDA inspection. Some of these may vary for other participants in the food supply chain.
Effective lot tracking goes hand in hand with a reliable software solution.
It is best for the tracking program to be fully integrated with your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, thus avoiding duplicate number entries and any other unnecessary confusion.
Some of the main benefits of lot tracking for food and beverage companies include:
If you want to learn more about how Datacor’s software can help you enhance your inventory management and tracking, get in touch or Sign up for a free demo with one of our industry experts.