Food producers begin to adopt product tracking systems
Dole and Western Growers install RFID and GPS systems; voluntary regulations take hold throughout California
The recent spate of E. coli poisonings has exposed a dirty little secret in the agriculture industry: the failure to emulate other businesses by tracking product throughout the supply chain. “Because of the problem with record keeping, we are not able to trace back to a single location,” said FDA’s Jack Guzewich, referring to the spinach-related outbreak of last September. “We end up with multiple locations, multiple farms. And we have to visit them all.” This a major problem for regulators, but it is also of concern to growers who are swimming upstream to restore consumer confidence and fend of lawsuits. No doubt some companies are worried that the failure to properly monitor their product will be considered strong evidence against them in such cases.
Fortunately, a number of companies are taking steps in the right direction. “We all understand that what happened in September 2006 cannot happen again,” said James Gorny of the United Fresh Produce Association. Dole Food, for instance, has started using RFID tags to track vegetables as they move from the field to trucks and through processing facilities — a smart move considering that the recent outbreak was in fact eventually traced to that company. Similarly, Western Growers is developing a GPS system to help monitor its far-flung collection of farms enabling growers to track their goods through the supply chain, and even produce buyers are getting in on the act. Many, the Wall Street Journal reports, are now laying out rules and regulations for the growers they buy from, requiring them to monitor their farms for possible sources of contamination and insisting on guarantees that the directions are followed.
These systems are all an impovement, we think, but we see room for improvement. We also see room for a company to provide it by providing a standard record-keeping system for the agriculture industry nationwide. “It’s almost like 9/11, and all the different responders have different frequencies so they can’t talk to each other,” says Andrew Weisbecker, a plaintiff’s lawyer working on E. coli-related lawsuits. Our readers are already hard at work on that problem. Maybe some others would like to handle this one?
