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Traceability in the Food Supply Chain

Posted on by rfxadmin

This white paper describes how traceability transforms food products into powerful “digital assets,” helps prevent common supply chain and business problems, and brings an array of benefits to all actors in the food supply chain. It examines the regulatory landscape in the United States, where the Food and Drug Administration has made food traceability one of its top priorities. We examine the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), the Food Traceability List, and the Final Rule on Requirements for Additional Traceability Records for Certain Foods. We feel food companies and their trading partners everywhere can benefit from understanding these requirements and should see them as indicative of where the industry is headed in terms of regulations, technology, and consumer expectations.

 

Saudi Arabia’s Traceability Requirements for Imported Food

Posted on by rfxadmin

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia imports about 80 percent of its food, according to a June 2020 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. To prevent food-borne illnesses and increase visibility in the food supply chain, the Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA) strictly regulates imported food.

Let’s take a look at what food companies must do to comply with SFDA regulations when shipping their products to Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia’s requirements for imported food

The Department of Agriculture report lists the following import procedures. First, companies must create an “E-account” with the SFDA and register their food products. They must have a Commercial Register, which includes imports and distribution of food
products. They must also submit an original invoice certified by a chamber of commerce in their home country. Last, depending on the product being imported, the may be asked to present some of following certificates:

  • Certificate of origin (copy)
  • Halal certificate (original). A Halal certificate is proof that the product meets Islamic Law requirements and is acceptable for consumption in Muslim-majority countries, as well as Western countries with a large Islamic population.
  • Certificate of slaughtering for meat and poultry (original)

Other requirements for imported food items

The GCC Standardization Organization (GSO) was established in 2001 and began operations in 2004. It is exactly what its name says: a standards organization for Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members. GSO requirements for Saudi Arabia’s imported foods are listed below. Many of these regulations also apply to domestic food items.

GCC Standards Organization (GSO) 9/2007

Since the end of 2010, Saudi Arabia has enforced the Gulf Standard 9/2007. Per this standard, all prepackaged and domestic foods must at minimum contain the following data points:

  • Product name
  • Packer’s name
  • Country of origin or manufacture
  • Listing of ingredients
  • Instructions for use (if applicable)
  • Shelf life

GSO 2233/2018 requirements for nutritional labeling

In 2013, the SFDA began enforcing GSO 2233/2012, a regulation from the GSO that requires labels to clearly disclose a product’s nutritional information (e.g., calories, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats) that may affect its nutritional value and consumers’ health or safety. The labels must list the ingredients, and nutritional information must be presented in a standardized, easy-to-read table so customers can readily understand what they’re purchasing. The labeling is also designed to increase people’s nutritional education to improve overall health. Some products are exempt from labeling, including bottled water, fresh fruits and vegetables, one-nutrient foods such as rice and coffee, and foods for special dietary uses, including infant formula.

Final thoughts

Keeping up with food traceability and regulations in Saudi Arabia — or any market — is a challenge. But rfxcel can help. Our solutions for food and beverage cover everything from farm to fork, from compliance to environmental monitoring. Contact us to book a demo of our award-winning rfxcel Traceability System and see how this  customizable, scalable platform will simplify and accelerate all of your supply chain operations.

Food Traceability Regulations in the United States: A Timeline

Posted on by rfxadmin

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is orchestrating the construction of a more robust, technology-driven approach to food traceability and safety. And it’s happening as the food industry is undergoing major change, including scores of new foods being introduced to the market, rising consumer demand for more information about the food they buy, the development of more sophisticated production and delivery methods, and a growing push for digitization of the supply chain.

As regulations in the United States continue to evolve, manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, and retailers need to keep a finger on the pulse of the latest developments. Today, we’ll help with a quick rundown of what’s happened with food traceability over the last year.

Food traceability regulations in the United States: 2020-present

On September 23, 2020, the FDA published “Requirements for Additional Traceability Records for Certain Foods” on its Food Traceability List. Referred to as the “Food Traceability Proposed Rule,” it’s part of the FDA’s New Era of Smarter Food Safety Blueprint and aims to standardize the data elements and information required to rapidly and accurately identify foods that may be causing illness. It defines additional recordkeeping requirements for businesses that manufacture, process, pack, or hold foods on the FDA’s Food Traceability List, which must establish and maintain records containing key data elements (KDEs) associated with specific critical tracking events (CTEs).

In January 2021, the FDA made clarifying modifications to the Food Traceability List and published a detailed FAQ that answered commonly asked questions that emerged following the announcement of the Proposed Rule. In February 2021, the comments period for the modifications closed. The FDA has until November 2022 to finalize it.

More about the New Era of Smarter Food Safety Blueprint

These initiatives are part of the FDA’s New Era of Smarter Food Safety. Announced in April 2019, it envisions a modern approach to ensuring food safety through digital, tech-enabled traceability.

The New Era of Smarter Food Safety Blueprint, announced in July 2020, outlines the FDA’s methodology for achieving its traceability and safety goals. It’s based on the following four pillars, which leverage a range of technologies, analytics, business models, modernization, and values as its building blocks:

1. Tech-enabled food traceability

A supply chain that includes paper-based recordkeeping and yields insufficient data makes it difficult to track and trace foods rapidly. Fast, accurate food traceability is essential to safeguarding consumers’ health — and your brand reputation and bottom line.

For example, modernized food traceability that leverages the latest technologies and integrates expanding data streams empowers supply chain stakeholders to identify an outbreak and trace a contaminated food product’s origin within minutes — or even seconds — and be proactive about getting the product off of shelves.

2. Smarter tools and approaches for prevention and outbreak response

In addition to better food traceability, the FDA wants to ensure the root cause of an outbreak or contamination can be easily identified to support a prevention-based approach. To do this, stakeholders need to incorporate new knowledge while continuously assessing how they can make processes and communications more effective and efficient. As more data becomes available, the use of predictive analytics tools becomes increasingly important to predict when a significant food event may occur. With this information, manufacturers can prevent a contaminated food products from entering the supply chain or target efforts to remove a potentially contaminated product from the market.

3. New business models and retail modernization

As the industry continues to find new ways to produce and distribute food, the FDA is seeking to explore new approaches in ensuring food traceability and safety. This includes:

  • Educating supply chain actors on the importance of food safety issues
  • Adapting FDA oversight to ensure the safety of novel ingredients, new foods, and new food production methods
  • Advancing the safety of foods sold in traditional retail establishments
4. Food safety culture

The FDA wants to encourage an environment of support for a stronger food safety culture on farms, in food facilities, and in homes. If the food industry does not commit to embracing food traceability and safety, real improvements will be difficult to achieve.

Final thoughts

We can be certain of two things when it comes to food traceability regulations in the United States: they’re going to keep evolving and they’re not going away. The good news is advancements in technology are making it profoundly easier — and even more affordable — to ensure food traceability across the entire supply chain. Yes, the FDA’s proposed requirements technically apply only to items on the Food Traceability List, but the Agency is encouraging voluntary adoption of these practices industry-wide. Savvy food companies will see this as an opportunity to get involved early and be part of the process, helping to set the industry’s regulatory course while going a long way to secure their own business.

rfxcel can help you comply with U.S. food traceability regulations today, tomorrow — always. From raw ingredients to finished goods, our rfxcel Traceability System (rTS) offers end-to-end food supply chain traceability and visibility. Our rfxcel Integrated Monitoring (rIM) is a real-time traceability and supply chain visibility solution that helps you remotely monitor products in transit And our MobileTraceability app brings the power of rTS to every node of your operations, including places that have traditionally been “blind spots.” Contact us today to arrange a demo.

Mandatory Dairy Product Labeling in Russia to Begin in Two Months

Posted on by rfxadmin

It’s going to be a busy year for dairy product labeling in Russia. (If you missed our earlier overview, be sure to check it out.) In fact, it’s going to be a busy year for product labeling in Russia generally. A quick look at our blog reveals that the National Track and Trace Digital System, or Chestny ZNAK, is not relenting on its goal of transforming Russia’s supply chain by 2024:

But let’s stay focused on dairy product labeling, which is scheduled to commence on June 1 for two product categories, then will be phased in for two other categories later in the year.

Dairy product labeling in Russia: background

The Chestny ZNAK pilot for dairy product labeling from July 15, 2019, to December 31, 2020. The dairy supply chain has a unique configuration because Chestny ZNAK will share track and trace duties with the “Mercury” electronic veterinary certification system, which tracks animal products in Russia.

Dairy product labeling requires a DataMatrix code containing four data points: a 14-digit Global Trade Item Number (GTIN), a 13-digit serial number, a 4-digit verification key, and an expiration date.

Other dairy product labeling requirements include the following:

  • Product packaging must have a blank field up to 15×15 mm to accommodate the DataMatrix code.
  • Caps on PET bottles must be able to accommodate either printing or labeling with a laser.
  • Manufacturers can have unusually shaped cartons or bottles tested to determine if the form factor affects dairy product labeling and scanning accuracy/reliability.
  • Aggregation is required; the parent-child relationship must be maintained between the aggregation and the individual units within it.

If you want to learn more about Russian dairy product labeling, download our “Russia Chestny ZNAK and the Dairy Industry” white paper. It’s fully updated for 2021 and really drills down into the details.

While we’re at it, if you want to learn about product labeling and serialization for all of the industries regulated in Russia, download our “Overview of Chestny ZNAK Compliance for Key Industries.” This is also fully updated for 2021 and is our most comprehensive publication about Russian supply chain compliance.

The June 1 dairy labeling requirements

Mandatory dairy product labeling begins June 1 for cheeses and ice cream and other edible ice with or without cocoa. Only serialized products can be sold after this date. However, products produced or imported into Russia before June 1 may be sold until the product’s expiration date.

Companies were permitted to begin labeling these cheese and ice cream products as early as January 20, 2021. They were also allowed to transfer dairy product labeling data to the Government Information System for Marking (GIS MT), which catalogs all labeled goods in Russia’s supply chain. To transfer data to GIS MT, you must be registered with Chestny ZNAK.

The table below shows Russia’s product classification codes (OKPD2) and the corresponding Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) Combined Nomenclature of Foreign Economic Activity (TN VED) codes for labeling these products. This information comes from Chestny ZNAK.

Russia Dairy Product Labeling

 

Final thoughts

rfxcel is the leader in Chestny ZNAK compliance. Not just for dairy product labeling — for labeling requirements in all regulated industries. We know these regulations can be tough to decipher. To help, we have useful resources, like the stories we linked above, our Chestny ZNAK refresher course, our white papers, and our webinars.

These are great places to start, but the best way to ensure you’re prepared to comply with Russia dairy product labeling requirements is to talk with us directly. When we say we’re the leader in Russian compliance, consider our credentials:

  • We’re an official integration, software, and tested solution partner with the Center for Research in Perspective Technologies (CRPT), which operates Chestny ZNAK.
  • We were recently accredited as an IT company by the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications, and Mass Media.
  • We’re one of the few providers with active implementations in Russia.
  • We’ve tripled our workforce in Russia over the last year.
  • Our Moscow-based team provides our clients, which include major global consumer goods and pharmaceutical companies, the quickest time to market while fully automating their compliance reporting.

We’ve also demonstrated that our solutions, including our signature rfxcel Traceability System (rTS), Compliance Management (rCM), and Serialization Processing (rSP), can meet the stringent Russia dairy serialization requirements and ensure you stay compliant. In fact, we had to prove this to the CRPT to be named an official partner. rTS works seamlessly with Chestny ZNAK, including a Russian-language user interface that makes integration and startup much quicker.

So contact us today learn more about how we can help you with dairy product labeling and other Chestny ZNAK compliance. No matter how far along you are in your preparations to comply, you should talk to us — even if you’re already working with another provider. Our powerful software ensures companies in any industry remain compliant with Russia’s complex regulations.

 

 

 

 

Food Traceability Gets Precise: The State of the Art

Posted on by rfxadmin

In recent years, the food industry has been under increasing pressure to trace products from farm to table. When COVID came onto the scene, the need for food traceability only intensified, as consumers wanted assurance from retailers and their supply chain partners that they could rely on the safety of their food.

Food traceability, however, is only as good as the degree to which it is executed up and down the supply chain. In order to improve supply chain management, facilitate feedback for food quality and safety, and differentiate your food product from your competitors’, you need to get precise in your traceability efforts.

Precision food traceability

Precision food traceability refers to the in-depth tracing of supply chain data and critical tracking events (CTEs) backward (to the source of the product) and forward (everywhere a food product has been used) to facilitate the quick and effective review of every action taken related to a product at each stage. With the ability to pinpoint a particular food product’s movement and characteristics, precision traceability not only offers detailed information about a product’s freshness, nutritional values, and logistics, it also supports proactive, informed decision-making should a food safety event occur.

Serialization is an essential tool in a precision food traceability system. The process of creating a unique code for each product, serialization delivers granular data about the food product to provide significantly more end-to-end visibility. With the ability to track the product at every stage, item-level traceability makes it easy to capture key data elements (KDEs), which could be used to trigger an investigation and reduce traceback time in the event of a food safety issue.

For example, let’s say you want to track a harvest operator’s location beyond the primary farmer and farm. Serialization gives you access to data down to the person who picked a vegetable, and from which row, ranch, or plot. For meat products, you can quickly trace back to not just the exact animal, but also to its pen location, feed, and even medicines.

With the ability to track outcomes (e.g., quality inspections and safety test results) and associate them to the product beyond the original facility, you can look back at any event in a product’s lifecycle even after it’s been shipped from the original facility. Precision food traceability makes it possible to track customer feedback and connect it to supply chain data points to deliver a complete picture of the product’s safety and performance. You can also evaluate how you’re doing on a sustainability front by tracking post-consumer activity, such as recycling and waste.

Specific uses for precision food traceability

On its journey from farm to table, a food product may be exposed to disease-causing organisms and food safety hazards. As the volume of international trade expands, so does the potential for transmission of pathogens or chemical contamination.

We all know problems can arise anywhere in the supply chain. Containing ingredients — perhaps from all over the world — and processed in different facilities and handled by wholesalers, retailers, and transportation companies, a food item is handled by many actors before ending up on the consumer’s plate. A precision food traceability system is paramount to ensuring food safety and minimizing the impact should an event arise.

Precision food traceability makes it easy to investigate food safety issues, identify the source of contamination, assess the scope of impact, and resolve the problem quickly. With the ability to trace back to the health of the animal, feed production, rearing, transportation, and more, you can quickly identify the source of infection or prohibited additives and take preventive and control measures to avoid the introduction of the contaminant.

Beyond safety, precision traceability also supports profitability. With detailed food traceability data, you can intelligently evaluate your operations, optimize efficiencies, analyze yield, and even apply consumer feedback to measure return on production investment. Precision traceability can also reduce food waste by tracking and recording data through every stage of the supply chain.

Final thoughts

Maintaining food safety is critical to your overall success and, more important, consumer health. The better and more precise your tracing system, the better equipped you will be to isolate the source of an issue and address quality control problems, quickly and efficiently. By minimizing the production and distribution of substandard and perhaps even illegal products, you reduce the risk of recalls, negative publicity, and liability, and have a “firewall” to protect your brand in the process.

Keeping tabs on every event related to your food supply can seem daunting but rfxcel can help. Offering the most complete and flexible raw materials and finished goods traceability solution in the food and beverage industry, we can help optimize your supply chain operations, meet compliance requirements, track products, and increase business value.

Exploring Meat Traceability in the Food Supply Chain: Getting to Know Your Protein

Posted on by rfxadmin

Today’s consumers demand transparency, particularly when it comes to the meat they consume. They want more information about how and where the livestock was raised and processed — not just from a nutritional standpoint, but also with regard to food safety practices, animal care practices, environmental impact, and worker safety. Put simply, they want meat traceability.

Consumers are making an emotional connection to the foods they buy and consume; they want to feel good about where their money is going and what they are putting into their bodies. While this trend has been growing over the past several years, it has gained significant traction recently. Add the pandemic into the mix, and you’ve got an even greater demand for transparency amid an environment driven by heightened health and financial concerns.

The supply chain saw significant disruption during the pandemic, as high infection rates in processing plants led to a marked curtail in operations in pork, beef, and poultry plants—and in some cases, plant closures. In fact, roughly 65 percent of meat processing plants experienced outbreaks and 20 percent were forced to temporarily suspend operations, which, in a consolidated meat industry, had a ripple effect across the country. As the outbreaks played out publicly, consumers grew even warier of the origins of their meats.

Adding more complexity to the issue, bad weather over the past year meant smaller corn and soybean harvests, making it harder and more expensive for cattle, hog, and poultry farmers to feed their herds. The last time the industry saw such high grain prices was during the 2012 U.S. drought.

As meat supplies diminished, consumer demand grew, with more people stuck inside and forced to cook and eat at home. The result: price inflation at the grocery stores, making it more expensive for consumers to feed their families. As they pay more for the foods that nourish their families and read headlines about the pandemic’s effects on the food supply chain, their demand for transparency has only become greater.

Meat traceability is more essential than ever

As we usher in a new era in food safety, meat traceability is no longer a “nice-to-have” — it’s essential. With increasing consumer demand for more information about where their protein is coming from, clear documentation from the farm to the end product is a must.

The Global Food Traceability Center defines traceability as the “ability to access any or all information relating to a food under consideration, throughout its entire life cycle, by means of recorded identifications.” This goes beyond the information itself; it’s about linking the information throughout the supply chain and ensuring coordinated processes and end-to-end meat traceability.

The good news is that tech-enabled meat traceability doesn’t have to be complicated, and its benefits are vast and powerful. From increased meat quality, improved food safety, and fewer product recalls to better inventory tracking and superior customer service, traceability delivers a range of benefits that go far beyond simply responding to consumers’ demand for information. With visibility across the entire supply chain, manufacturers can document and link the production, processing, and distribution chain of their protein products, which results in greater organizational efficiencies, reduced market and operational risks, a stronger competitive advantage, and a better brand image.

Final thoughts

While challenges continue to emerge amid a rapidly evolving global landscape, brands have an opportunity to tell a story that evokes a positive emotion and inspires a purchase. Consumers want to know that their meats were produced ethically and safely, and, of course, pose no risk to themselves or their families. As more and more people scan labels and packages for information about where their food came from and how it was made, transparency will play an increasingly crucial role in a meat producer’s brand image. It really comes down to trust: If consumers don’t trust your brand, they’ll be more than happy to buy another company’s product. Meat traceability satiates a consumer’s need for information, which builds trust with your brand.

From farm to table, rfxcel’s food supply chain solutions have you covered. Our award-winning Traceability System (rTS) is the basis of a modernized, digital supply chain with fully customizable and scalable solutions that yield complete end-to-end meat traceability. It is the foundation of a digital supply chain and a successful food recall management system that operates with surgical precision.

Offering the most complete and flexible raw materials and meat traceability solution for food and beverage, we’ll help you to optimize your supply chain operations while catering to the consumers’ increasing demand for information about the meats they consume.

rfxcel Ready to Help Dairy Industry Comply with Russia’s 2021 Serialization Regulations

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rfxcel’s track and trace solutions ensure companies operating in Russia’s dairy market can comply with dairy serialization regulations being rolled out in 2021

Reno, Nevada (Feb. 11, 2021). rfxcel, the global leader in digital supply chain traceability solutions, today announced that it was prepared to ensure companies operating in Russia’s dairy market could comply with serialization regulations being rolled out in 2021.

Mandatory serialization of cheeses and cottage cheese and ice cream and food ice is set to begin on June 1, 2021. These are the first dairy products required to be serialized in Russia’s National Track and Trace Digital System, known as Chestny ZNAK. Companies were allowed to begin labeling these goods as early as January 20, but the regulations will not go into full effect until June.

Furthermore, dairy products with a shelf life of more than 40 days and fewer than 40 days are required to be serialized beginning September 1 and  December 1, respectively. The regulations apply to several product categories, including milk and cream, buttermilk and fermented milk products, and dairy products for baby food.

rfxcel CEO Glenn Abood said the company had been preparing for the dairy regulations since an industry pilot was announced in 2019. “The long and short of it is that we’re always prepared to help companies in any industry navigate Russia’s strict and complex regulations,” he said. “We committed ourselves to being the leader in Chestny ZNAK compliance when the system was created a little more than four years ago, and our team in Moscow has followed its rollout, the evolution of the regulations, and the pilots for different industries, including dairy. We knew what was coming, so we’re ready to go.”

The dairy pilot ran between July 2019 and the end of 2020. During that time rfxcel earned official partner status in 10 of the 11 industries for which the Center for Research in Perspective Technologies (CRPT), which operates Chestny ZNAK, had chosen partners. It also tripled the size of its Moscow-based team and continues to be one of only a few solutions providers with active implementations in Russia.

Abood said the CRPT designations and success of the Moscow team had solidified rfxcel’s status as the leader in Russian compliance. “We’ve taken our rfxcel Traceability System, which includes solutions for serialization and compliance, into Russia and enabled companies in the pharmaceutical and consumer goods spaces meet deadlines, adapt to changes, stay compliant, and keep their supply chains moving. It’s been quite exciting, actually, and we’re looking forward to helping dairy companies have the same kind of success.”

Enacted by Federal Law No. 425-FZ on December 29, 2017, Chestny ZNAK was designed to protect consumers by keeping fake and substandard products out of the market. As envisioned, by 2024 it will transform the Russian supply chain and affect virtually every industry, from pharmaceuticals to baby food.

To learn more about rfxcel’s operations in Russia and its solutions for dairy, pharma, consumer goods, and other industries, contact Vice President of Marketing and Strategic Initiatives Herb Wong at hwong@rfxcel.com and visit rfxcel.com.

About rfxcel

Founded in 2003, rfxcel provides leading-edge software solutions to help companies build and manage their digital supply chain, lower costs, and protect their products and brand reputations. Blue-chip organizations in the life sciences (pharmaceuticals and medical devices), food and beverage, worldwide government, and consumer goods industries trust rfxcel’s signature Traceability System (rTS) to power end-to-end supply chain solutions in key areas such as track and trace, environmental monitoring, regulatory compliance, serialization, and visibility. The company is headquartered in the United States and has offices in the United Kingdom, the EU, Latin America, Russia, India, Japan, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific region.

Food Traceability: What’s the Latest for 2021?

Posted on by rfxadmin

As we all know, the pandemic has revealed shortcomings in the supply chains of virtually every industry. And though the vaccine supply chain has dominated headlines over the last several months, food traceability has been top of mind for companies and governments alike since the earliest days of COVID-19.

Let’s take a look at the state of food traceability — what it is, how it works, and its future as we kick off 2021.

What is food traceability?

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) defines food traceability as “the ability to follow the movement of a food product and its ingredients through all steps in the supply chain, both backward and forward.”

That’s a spot-on definition, but we’d like to add a few things. First, food traceability in 2021 means you can follow your products in real time. Yes, you can see where they’ve been and know where they’re going, but you can also see where they are right now. And with powerful tools like our rfxcel Integrated Monitoring (rIM) solution and Mobile Traceability app, you’ll have access to real-time information about environmental conditions (e.g., temperature, humidity, light, tilt, and shock) and location.

With this rich, actionable data, your food traceability capabilities expand exponentially. Not only can you take immediate action if there’s an environmental concern — a temperature excursion, for example — but you can course-correct if your vehicle is approaching a traffic jam or encountering other obstacles or delays. You can also tap data to combat theft and make recalls more efficient. (We wrote about modernizing food recall management late last year; check it out here.)

The other thing we’d like to add to the FDA’s definition is that, today, food traceability should be occurring in a digital supply chain. If you’re still pushing paper in 2021, it’s time for you to contact us and start thinking about upgrading to a digital supply chain powered by the rfxcel Traceability System (rTS). Our award-winning platform will transform your supply chain and how you use it. From ingredients to finished goods, rTS will bring state-of-the art food traceability to your operations.

Furthermore, rTS turns every one of your products into a “digital asset” that you can use to nurture and protect your brand and engage consumers. Complete food traceability, starting at the harvest and ending in your customers’ homes, builds an ironclad product provenance and a compelling story you can promote and share. Today’s consumers, especially with the health and safety of their families foremost in their minds, are demanding more from brands — more information, more transparency, more quality, more interaction. As we wrote last fall, food traceability is creating a new kind of “consumer kingdom,” and it’s a digital supply chain that’s making it possible.

Food traceability: An FDA priority

In “Modernizing Food Recall Management,” we talked about the FDA’s New Era of Smarter Food Safety. Announced in April 2019, it’s “a new approach to food safety, leveraging technology and other tools to create a safer and more digital, traceable food system.”

Then, in July 2020 the Administration released the “New Era of Smarter Safety Blueprint,” which included a Food Traceability Proposed Rule designed to “help the FDA rapidly and effectively identify recipients of foods on its Food Traceability List to prevent or mitigate foodborne illness outbreaks and address credible threats of serious adverse health consequences or death.”

Next, to ring in 2021, the Administration on January 12 “made clarifying edits” to the Food Traceability List and published a FAQ for the Food Traceability Proposed Rule.

The Food Traceability List contains the foods that have additional traceability recordkeeping requirements per the Proposed Rule. The January 12 edits did not add or remove items from the list; instead, the FDA changed the descriptions of some commodities. For example, “fresh” was added to several fruits and vegetables “to clarify the scope of those commodities.” Revisions also clarified what cheeses fell under the category of “cheeses, other than hard cheeses.” See the FDA’s four-page memo for all the changes.

The FAQ for the Food Traceability Proposed Rule addresses questions the Administration has received about the Proposed Rule. Its primary goal is “to assist stakeholders who are considering providing feedback during the comment period, which has been extended until February 22, 2021.” If you want to submit a comment or review the comments that have been submitted, go to regulations.gov (Docket ID: FDA-2014-N-0053).

Final thoughts

Companies and governments around the world have been compelled to re-examine the security, efficiency, and resilience of their supply chains. Food traceability is vital to public health and safety, so it should rightfully remain a top priority.

rfxcel was founded on the principle of helping consumers know where products come from and being able to confirm that they’re safe and legitimate. With rfxcel’s Traceability System, Integrated Monitoring, Mobile Traceability app, and other solutions for food traceability, you’ll increase food quality and safety, modernize and improve recall management, optimize inventory tracking, and improve every aspect of customer service and interaction.

In other words, food traceability in a digital supply chain from rfxcel will ensure you’re doing everything possible to safeguard your customers, your brand, and your bottom line. No matter where you do business — the United States, Europe, Asia, South America, the Middle East — we can help make sure you’re ready for whatever 2021 (and beyond) has in store. Contact us today to arrange a demo.

Modernizing Food Recall Management

Posted on by rfxadmin

“Recall” is the one word food companies never want to hear. But recalls are a fact of life, so it’s the wise manufacturer, wholesaler, and retailer that prepares for the inevitable. What does it take to have fast, effective food recall management? The short answer is that you need to modernize your supply chain so you can act quickly based on high-quality data. Let’s take a look.

“Modernize” is today’s food and beverage buzzword

The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) has been in effect for almost a decade, so modernizing the food and beverage supply chain isn’t a new idea. Designed to improve the security and safety of the U.S. food supply, FSMA focused on preventing food-borne pathogens across the food system. It also encouraged companies to be proactive instead of reactive when it comes to food safety — including how they deal with food recall management.

Now, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has ratcheted up its food safety efforts. On April 30, 2019, it announced the New Era of Smarter Food Safety, which it describes as “a new approach to food safety, leveraging technology and other tools to create a safer and more digital, traceable food system.” To be rolled out over the next decade, it’s “also about simpler, more effective, and modern approaches and processes.”

In other words, more modernization that builds on FSMA. The “ultimate goal is to bend the curve of foodborne illness in this country by reducing the number of illnesses.”

Then, in July 2020, the Administration released the “New Era of Smarter Safety Blueprint” that

“ … outlines achievable goals to enhance traceability, improve predictive analytics, respond more rapidly to outbreaks, address new business models, reduce contamination of food, and foster the development of stronger food safety cultures. It outlines a partnership between government, industry, and public health advocates based on a commitment to further modernize our approach to food safety.”

The Blueprint also includes a Food Traceability Proposed Rule (formal title: “Requirements for Additional Traceability Records for Certain Foods.”) It would implement Section 204(d) of FSMA, with requirements to “help the FDA rapidly and effectively identify recipients of foods on its Food Traceability List to prevent or mitigate foodborne illness outbreaks and address credible threats of serious adverse health consequences or death.” The list includes fruits and vegetables, fish, shellfish, cheeses, nut butters, eggs, herbs, and ready-to-eat salads.

What does modernization mean for food recall management?

It’s clear that FSMA and the New Era of Smarter Food Safety have recalls in mind when they mandate modernization or propose procedures to attain it. However, with or without the influence of regulations, rules, blueprints, and lists, modernization boils down to two things for food recall management: digitization and traceability.

A digital supply chain with end-to-end traceability delivers speed and high-quality data, the most crucial aspects of food recall management. Digitization — eliminating the physical paper trail in favor of a cloud-based management system — enables end-to-end traceability, and end-to-end traceability means you have rich, actionable data available in real time so you can find products quickly, make informed decisions, and act with authority and assuredness.

Digitization and traceability also expediate food recall management because they allow you to easily share information with your trading partners and regulators. If you’re a manufacturer or wholesaler, you’ll keep retailers up to date so they can take the recalled product off the shelves. Consumers benefit too, because they’ll get recall alerts and know to return the product or dispose of it as instructed.

Modernizing food recall management also helps mitigate the very things that can trigger a recall in the first place, such as poor visibility into the supply chain, lack of accountability, or an insufficient safety culture. Indeed, it’s up to companies to fix such shortcomings internally through training and establishing safety protocols, but digitization and traceability will carry and facilitate safety across the entire supply chain.

For instance, you can attach critical tracking events (CTEs) and key data elements (KDEs) to every product’s digital profile, creating an indelible provenance you can trace up and down the supply chain. You’ll see where a product has been, where it is (or is supposed to be), and where it’s going. During a recall, you can “reach into” your supply chain and extract the product quickly.

Final thoughts

As we move into 2021, F&B companies have absolutely no excuses to put off modernizing their supply chains and recall management systems. A poorly handled recall can result in catastrophic financial loss and cause irreparable damage to your reputation. And companies that don’t modernize will likely find themselves pursued by regulators, ostracized by trading partners, shunned by consumers, and, ultimately, out of business.

rfxcel can help. Our award-winning Traceability System (rTS) is the basis of a modernized, digital supply chain with fully customizable and scalable solutions that yield complete end-to-end traceability. It is the foundation of a digital supply chain and a successful food recall management system that operates with surgical precision.

For example, our Serialization Processing (rSP) solution assigns every product a unique digital ID that lets you locate affected products quickly, remove them from circulation, and record and verify that every recalled item was destroyed. Furthermore, rSP generates last-mile data that helps you identify the source of outbreaks and their scope for better consumer safety efforts.

Coupled with rSP, our Raw Materials Traceability (rRM) and Finished Goods Traceability (rFG) solutions build a digital supply chain that aids food recall management by maintaining a validated, traceable pedigree for every product. Track the transformation of raw materials into finished goods with total forward and backward traceability. Track lot to unit or unit to lot all the way to the consumer. Attach key data to every critical tracking event digitally. And if there’s a recall, see how exposed you are and respond rapidly by notifying affected customers and trading partners and changing the disposition of all units/lots to “RECALL” to prevent them from being included in any ship event. You can also use your data to aid investigations.

Contact us today to speak with one of our F&B supply chain experts. They’ll give you a short rTS demo that will show you how an rfxcel digital supply chain with end-to-end traceability will modernize your operations and optimize your food recall management.

rfxcel Welcomes Lincoln Manning as Chief Revenue Officer

Posted on by rfxadmin

Reno, Nevada, Sept. 17, 2020. rfxcel, the global leader in digital supply chain traceability solutions, today announced that Lincoln Manning has joined its executive team as chief revenue officer. Mr. Manning will be responsible for all aspects of revenue generation, including worldwide sales, ecosystem partnerships, sales operations, and systems engineering for the company’s verticals, which include the life sciences (pharmaceuticals and medical devices), food and beverage, government, and consumer goods.

“We are glad to have Lincoln on our team,” said rfxcel CEO and Co-Founder Glenn Abood. “He brings a wealth of experience from diverse industries that he’ll be able to leverage across rfxcel. We are particularly excited about his devotion to and excellence in anticipating what customers need and doing what it takes to ensure they succeed. This is one of our corporate values.

“Lincoln also has a track record of building and strengthening sales teams. Our sales teams are solid in every market, but Lincoln will take them to the next level, helping us maintain our leadership where we’re already established and build our presence where we’re still growing.”

Prior to joining rfxcel, Mr. Manning held executive-level positions at software and digital marketing companies. He led sales, marketing, and customer success teams to increase revenue, reinvent business ecosystems, navigate post-merger corporate change, and reset reseller channels.

“There couldn’t be a more perfect time to be joining rfxcel,” Mr. Manning said. “Our mission of keeping the supply chain safe in key verticals is more important today than ever. I believe rfxcel is uniquely positioned globally to ensure products are safely delivered to patients and consumers, because of our agility and ability to respond to customer needs in today’s ever-changing environment.”

Mr. Abood co-founded rfxcel with Chief Strategy Officer Jack Tarkoff in 2003, so Mr. Manning joins the company as it celebrates 17 years of supply chain innovations and growth. Recent successes include conducting major pharma pilots for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Brazilian government; tripling the size of its team in Russia and being named an official software and integration partner of the Center for Research in Perspective Technologies (CRPT), which operates Russia’s National Track and Trace Digital System (Chestny ZNAK); releasing the latest version of its award-winning rfxcel Traceability Solution; increasing its presence in the Middle East; and being named 2020 Software Company of the Year by Nevada’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (NCET).

“Lincoln’s joining us at a busy time,” Abood said. “We’re keeping our customers’ supply chains running during the pandemic, improving our products and developing new solutions, and expanding our operations globally. Lincoln will be a huge asset as we continue to secure and optimize the pharma, food and beverage, government, and consumer goods supply chains. By strengthening our commitment to our customers, he’ll strengthen rfxcel. We’re all excited to have him on the team.”

For more information about rfxcel’s solutions, contact Herb Wong, vice president of marketing and strategic initiatives, at hwong@rfxcel.com or 925-824-0300.

 

About rfxcel

Founded in 2003, rfxcel provides leading-edge software solutions to help companies build and manage every aspect of a digital supply chain, lower costs, and protect their products and brand reputations. Blue-chip organizations in the life sciences (pharmaceuticals and medical devices), food and beverage, worldwide government, and consumer goods industries trust rfxcel’s signature Traceability System (rTS) to power end-to-end supply chain solutions in key areas such as track and trace, environmental monitoring, regulatory compliance, serialization, and visibility. The company is headquartered in the United States and has offices in the United Kingdom, the EU, Latin America, Russia, India, Japan, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific region.

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