07/02/08 Food Traceability

Food Traceability. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Do you know where the food you are eating comes from? The recent salmonella outbreak that has officials stumped and consumers leery has also caused some to put on their thinking caps as to how we can know where the food we eat is coming from and be able to quickly find problems. Andy Kennedy is President of Food LogiQ. KENNEDY: We work with associations to implement their best practices and traceability. In Canada we worked with the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency and we identify the key traceability or food safety practices that need to be automated and then working with technology partners that provide things like traceability tags. Food LogiQ is working with Smart Online to develop a program where it will be quick and easy to track food products. KENNEDY: Which provides an on demand technology platform that we've added food safety elements to and we worked together to develop a joint solution with that association really tailored to their specific needs, their products needs and their growers needs. Being able to quickly identify where food comes from is rapidly becoming a high priority especially in light of the recent salmonella issue. Kennedy walks us through their process. KENNEDY: The first step is to make sure that they are following good agricultural practices so our food safety audit module that we developed with Smart Online is used to enable third party auditors to go into the fields an verify that food safety practices are being followed at the field level. The next step in the process, once the product is harvested our traceability module can be used to identify batches of product. That information is then transmitted to the packer who then can track the product on through to the retail level and ultimately to us, the consumers. There is no way to put a bar code on individual pieces of fruit or vegetables. KENNEDY: The problem is salsa. Once you start using the fruit in something else then you lose traceability. So really you have to do a really good job in terms of good food safety practices all the way along because traceability does not guarantee safety. You have to have a full food safety program in place. For more information visit their website at www.foodlogiq.com. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.