FQcode | NOV 2008

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TRACEABILITY INITIATIVE

Whole chain traceability implementation for produce industry by the end of 2012

Miami, FL. Oct 8, 2008. The Steering Committee of the Produce Traceability Initiative has announced a plan including key milestones that need to be completed for the entire produce supply chain by the end of 2012 to develop a whole-chain traceability system for the produce industry.

34 companies, from American and Canadian produce supply chain steering by PMA (Produce Marketing Association), United Fresh and CPMA (Canadian Produce Marketing Association), adheres to sign on to the plan of seven steps to voluntary compliance for a standard external traceability solution; to bond better consumer food safety.

This plan seeks compliance of growers, packers, traders, distributors, food services and retailers to minimize produce food safety crisis, using external traceability solutions which allow buyers and consumers follows the trace of an item from farm to fork, protect brands and avoid legal liabilities. Those seven steps the industry needs to take to achieve electronic traceability by late 2012:

By third quarter 2009:

• Brand owners obtain GS1-issued company prefixes;
• Assign 14-digit Global Trade Item Numbers to every case configuration they pack;
• Provide those GTINs to their buyers;

By third quarter 2010:

• Brand owners will begin placing GTIN and lot numbers on case labels and human readable form;
• At the same time, the brand owners will put GTINs and lot numbers in machine readable bar codes;

By third quarter 2011:

• Handlers scan and store the GTIN and lot number on inbound cases;

By third quarter 2012:

• Handlers can scan and store the GTIN and lot number on outbound cases.

FQcode is ready to help industry on operate this latest demands. FQcode, True Traceability™ and Recall System is a ready-to-use Solution and a reference for the industry experts. Ensuring as well the follow benefits for your company:

1- Minimize recall impact: Industry needs rapid and precise recall. Whole-chain standardized identification allows locating affected products quickly, recalling in few minutes.
“FQcode is an example of how effective traceability can be. FQcode’s process has been in place for several years ... one recall was narrowed to only 13 cases of product, versus over 70 bins of product normally harvested from that particular field” wrote Gary Fleming, (PMA’s VP, Industry Technology & Standards) in his article “Traceability: a forgotten piece of food safety” (http://www.pma.com/traceability) after visiting traceability implementations in FQcode customers.

2- Assures chain-wide external traceability: to trace products across the supply chain using GS1 Standard, through the application of GTIN, lot number and pack/harvest date to cases, as the most proven standard in the world.
“FQcode’s True Traceability™ application and solutions was born using GS1, which also allows automatic generation of traceability information avoiding manual data entry”, said Leonardo Paniceres, FQcode’s COO.

3- Using case level traceability to have more control, as well as reduce recall scope. “If there's a problem, you have to be able to isolate it quickly; otherwise you're putting lives at risk and your consumer and brand and products are subject to degradation," says Martin Kupferman, FQcode’s Business Development Director to Produce Business Magazine.

4- Assures internal traceability, as an integral component of production and business processes that enables better quality standards and allows automatically audits at the same time.

Call our team now to help your company get traceability initiative requirements.

+1-954-839-8792 contact@fqcode.com

About Steering Committee
The steering committee of the Produce Traceability Initiative is a North American industry-led effort to adopt traceability throughout the produce supply chain drive by three associations: CPMA, PMA and United Fresh. They had met for the first time Jan. 9 in Atlanta to develop an action plan for establishing industry traceability best practices and goals for their adoption and accountability. Chaired by Food Lion LLC Chief Operating Officer Cathy Green, 41 companies are participating, including food services operators/distributors, retailers and grower/shippers.

About FQcode
FQcode supplies traceability solutions to the produce industry, worldwide. With more than ten years of experience and operations, and over 60 installations in USA, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Costa Rica and Ecuador, tracing more than 60 million cases per year.