For years, the term “food traceability” has permeated the media, and there has been a greater emphasis on consumers’ right to know where their food comes from.

With the high profile of foodborne illness outbreaks that caused the infamous case of Stephanie Smith, a 22-year-old girl who was left paralyzed after eating an E. coli-contaminated hamburger produced by Cargill and the Peanut Corporation of America’s demise after its products were determined to be the source of a nationwide Salmonella outbreak that sickened hundreds, and the weekly litany of food recalls for contamination with pathogenic bacteria, allergens, or for other causes, consumers are paying more attention to the origins of their food.

With this in mind, Food Safety News set out to learn more about food trace back and traceability.  We spoke with representatives from Scoring Ag, HarvestMark, Top Ten Produce, Recall InfoLink, and HCL Technologies about what they’re doing to help the food industry trace products from farm to consumer.  We’ll be featuring an interview with each in this series on traceability.

HCL Technologies and the Technology Behind Traceability

As the director of solution development at HCL Technologies, a global software services company, Ravi Sankar spends his time developing solutions and providing IT support for companies. Most recently, HCL has built two kinds of solutions–one more prevalent across the board, and the other more unique–in case of food contamination.

When food becomes contaminated, every company is responsible for trying to identify where they have that item within their purview, Sankar says. HCL Technologies helps these individuals and companies keep track of their product as it moves in and out of the various suppliers.

“One of the things that I discovered is that when you look at the food channel from farm all the way to fork, what happens is the food product undergoes multiple movements and transformations,” says Sankar. “And, what happens as a consequence of these transformations is if you’re way up on the channel or way down, you don’t have visibility into what is happening upstream or downstream, so it becomes very hard.”

Because of this, a number of SKUs come into play–more items, more entities–all while companies are still required to track them all down, explains Sankar. “It becomes very difficult to do this in an automated manner,” he said.  “One of the things that we have is a framework for helping connect up these companies up and down on the value chain.”

With information provided by the companies, individuals are able to instantly view where on the chain the products are located. “We’ve built an extensive solution that basically hooks up multiple small solutions, so it provides an integrated view through the pipelines,” says Sankar.

The major problem HCL is facing is from the receiving end. “We’re trying to talk to the industry groups to have them send us the information,” says Sankar. “We have the framework, we just don’t have these companies sending us the information yet.”

The system requires transactional data, which is the information coming in from each record as it happens in all the various companies.  It also mandates that a separate master file of the relationships established is available.

There are thousands of SKUs and combinations that are being sold and transferred through the food chain, and problems with maintaining accuracy arise when not all the information in the database is entered in a timely manner, says Sankar. As the number of transactions increase in the system, however, the more accurate and comprehensive an analysis and response becomes.

In terms of how cost effective the HCL framework is, it is a few pennies per palette, Sankar said. For now, however, companies don’t see any benefit or added value that they can get with the investment they would make.

“What [companies] are getting is a kind of insurance policy, but they feel that they already have a certain amount of insurance with the system they currently have in place,” guesses Sankar. “This is just an additional layer, so they’re a little reluctant to the spend the money at all.”

Sankar also believes that many are merely waiting for food safety legislation to pass. “One reason why they’re waiting is because they want to actually see what the legislation says,” explains Sankar.  “The fact that some legislation is coming is actually freezing everybody.”

While HCL has created a solution for food trace back, the company primarily focuses on helping companies manage their whole IT system, integrating various subsidiaries within that business, in a holistic manner.  “We are experts at integration, cleaning up data, and making sure we get all of the right data out,” says Sankar.

The HCL framework system also ensures that there is a certain amount of confidentiality in the information that is visible to the public. Currently, the system has two levels of permission, where individuals can look at their own information, “one up or one down,” as Sankar calls it.

There is also a holistic view that only the administrator has access to in case of a recall. “Right now our system allows you to either only look at your data or the whole data,” says Sankar. “Who has permission to what information that is not yours–that’s something that each person has to give permission for you to view.”

The Future of our Food

“We’re going to have traceability in everything that we do,” predicts Kanitz.  S. 510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, which should go to the Senate floor after the August recess, can change food traceability standards for everyone involved in the industry. “We need the ability to trace from every angle–frontward and backwards–to prove the attributes and say, ‘this wasn’t falsified,'” says William Kanitz, President of Scoring Ag.

According to Elliot Grant, founder of HarvestMark, traceability is also inevitable. “There’s so much pressure to implement traceability, just for food safety at the case level alone,” says Grant. “It’s not a flashing fad.  It’s definitely coming.”  Although consumers, growers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers, and everyone else up and down the food chain are unsure where the future for traceability lies, Grant says that the future is exciting.

“Traceability is your way to interact with the consumer,” says Grant. “It gives the consumer a way to interact with the grower, provide information that was never available before and will make everybody better. It will make everybody more efficient for quality and freshness.”

Grant hopes that traceability reaches the extent where the consumer can walk into a grocery store and feel more connected to people who are growing their food. “Traceability might not be the right word. It’s really about transparency,” says Grant. “And, that’s something we should all feel very excited about.”

He expects the government to mandate traceability on food–not at item level–in the next couple of years.

For John Bailey of Top Ten Produce, the future for traceability lies in social media. “By using the bar code on the item for the purposes of transparency between the grower and the consumer; that’s the future of traceability,” says Bailey. “When you’re dealing with fresh food and real people, you’re going to connect people to people. And, that’s where the value is going to come out.”

For Bailey, it is this transparency factor that provides the benefit. “In my opinion, in five years, it will be a requirement to do business with traditional retail,” predicts Bailey. “If your produce isn’t traceable, you don’t sell it in any retail store.”

According to Roger Hancock, CEO of Recall InfoLink, the transparency about product origins is going to increase as consumer demand rises. “The end point will be increasing transparency across the supply chain all the way to the consumer, while the consumer has greater visibility of the origins of the prod
uct.”

For HCL Technologies, the future for food traceability is looking bright, says Sankar. “I think this is a great benefit to the end consumer because this empowers the consumer to know that the food channel has built in some safety features to identify the source of contamination much faster,” says Sankar. “And, all this information flow will reduce the time taken to do all this from days or weeks of identifying and tracing the problem to hours or even minutes depending on the extent of the problem.”

This is where Sankar sees traceability evolving.

While the others remain optimistic about the future of traceability, there are some like Denis Stearns, a partner in the Marler Clark law firm and Seattle University professor, who remain skeptical.

“I think the future is continued industry resistance and skepticism,” says Stearns. “It’s going to continue to be driven by the public health needs at any given time.”

According to Stearns’ predictions, companies view record keeping as a cost with inadequate corresponding benefit. Any improvement, Stearns says, will come from the USDA, FDA, and United States legislature.

“It’s probably as good as it’s going to get on a voluntary basis by and large,” he guesses. “Any further improvement is going to require laws and regulations being passed to require different things.”

While there are a number of systems and technologies competing to cure this problem of tracing back contaminated food in a fast and efficient manner, a strict, rigid standardized system of traceability still seems a bit out of reach for others. “I believe in a free market system,” says Bailey.

So for now, there remain various technologies and frameworks to help in the case of recall, increase relations between the consumer and producer, and maintain food safety up and down the food chain.

For years, the term “food traceability” has permeated the media, and there has been a greater emphasis on consumers’ right to know where their food comes from.

With the high profile of foodborne illness outbreaks that caused the infamous case of Stephanie Smith, a 22-year-old girl who was left paralyzed after eating an E. coli-contaminated hamburger produced by Cargill and the Peanut Corporation of America’s demise after its products were determined to be the source of a nationwide Salmonella outbreak that sickened hundreds, and the weekly litany of food recalls for contamination with pathogenic bacteria, allergens, or for other causes, consumers are paying more attention to the origins of their food.

With this in mind, Food Safety News set out to learn more about food trace back and traceability. We spoke with representatives from Scoring Ag, HarvestMark, Top Ten Produce, Recall InfoLink, and HCL Technologies about what they’re doing to help the food industry trace products from farm to consumer. We’ll be featuring an interview with each in this series on traceability.

Recall InfoLink

After spending years in the food industry, working with various companies and federal agencies, CEO of Recall InfoLink Roger Hancock became intimate with the distribution, retail, manufacturing, and governmental operations side of recalls. Using his past experience, Hancock took the differing perspectives and put it together in an online system called Recall InfoLink.

“I made a system that makes notifications and responses to all the companies’ trading partners,” says Hancock. “The trading partners then can take that message and they can customize it and they can notify additional trading partners through successive integrations through the supply chain.”

Recall InfoLink is a business-to-business message for processing recall events, Hancock says.  Through this system, individual businesses can notify their trading partners with the pertinent information that will help remove a product from sale to protect customers, whether they are other businesses or the consuming public. Recall InfoLink aids in documenting these actions.

“The system is set up so that whatever level in the supply chain you are–whether you’re a manufacturer, processor, wholesaler, consolidator, retailer, the government, or the public–the information that you receive when you log in to the system is the information that is consistent with your interaction with your supplier.” Recall InfoLink stores the data that clients input into it.

In case of a recall, Recall InfoLink allows individuals to attach a press release if available, provide talking points and point of sale fines to their customers, include a description of the product (with specific item number), and object information for his or her trading partners. Those trading partners are then notified through a variety of communication channels, including text messaging, e-mailing, phone, or fax, says Hancock.

It doesn’t stop there.  The trading partners can go on the system and upload their customer alerts to continue the recall notification out to additional customers. “You get the cascading saturation of the marketplace with appropriate recall information, depending on what level on the supply chain you are participating in,” explains Hancock.

It is essential that the recalling company provide its trading partners with an appropriate sense of urgency, the reason behind the recall, and what is expected of them in the way that they handle the contaminated product on a going-forward basis.

“People receive all the recall information that needs to be tailored to them and the businesses that they’re operating in,” says Hancock. “There are business specifics in addition to the recall specifics.”

Recall InfoLink is exactly what its name sets it out to be–a connection, or a link, between those involved in the food channel, in regards to a recall. “We provide a seamless platform with all segments of a supply chain all the way to the consumer,” says Hancock. “Our job is to provide the right information at the right time, so the right action can be taken with respect to a recall, regardless of the position you hold in the food chain.”

In order to receive notifications of a recall and respond to it, there is no cost, there is no membership requirement, and there is no fee. If you want to use the system to automate and track your notification process and the responses, there is also no cost, Hancock says. If you want to use the system to notify your trading partners and track their responses, however, then you pay a per customer rate.

“Companies save up to 80 percent of the labor that’s required to go through the whole customer notification, documentation, response, credit, and re-supply process,” says Hancock.

Much like the other three systems, Recall InfoLink also works instantly. “The first reason that Recall InfoLink exists is to speed up the process for companies notifying their trading partners and documenting that notification and response so that recall can happen faster,” says Hancock. “On the business side, it protects companies’ brands. On the consumer side, it increases consumer confidence.”

Although the clients are in control of the information they put into the database, there is a boundary between the information that gets publicized and that that stays confidential. Recall InfoLink ensures that the recalling company is in control and thus, can decide what information to provide and to whom. The system allows for individual companies to get specific information for their company, instead of a global announcement, Hancock says.

The second level of control exists in the security that is available in the system, which prevents people from seeing information that isn’t for their eyes. And, though an archive does remain in the system, the information remains unavailable unless an individual has been linked to the recall. People also have the ability to go back and give reports, view how long it took for people to respond, and more, explains Hancock.

According to Denis Stearns, a partner in the Marler Clark law firm and professor at the Seattle University School of Law, it is a tug-of-war between consumers’ right to have information about the food they are consuming and readily accessible data that is available for specific eyes only. “You don’t want your competitors to know who your suppliers are,” says Stearns. “The flipside of it is consumers, especially when there’s an outbreak going on. I think that’s where the tension comes in.”

While some might argue the fact that there may be inaccuracy in the businesses’ contact information, Recall InfoLink’s system takes care of that. “Our system has a way to update your contact information,” says Hancock. “That updated information gets shared directly with your suppliers.”

According to Hancock, Recall InfoLink hopes to soon incorporate a method that will allow people to register for recall alerts with geography and product category, by simply inputting a zip code and item. This will help consumers
receive notification in case of a recall in their area.  But, for now, Recall InfoLink connects trading partners up and down the food chain in a quick, efficient manner

For years, the term “food traceability” has permeated the media, and there has been a greater emphasis on consumers’ right to know where their food comes from.

With the high profile of foodborne illness outbreaks that caused the infamous case of Stephanie Smith, a 22-year-old girl who was left paralyzed after eating an E. coli-contaminated hamburger produced by Cargill and the Peanut Corporation of America’s demise after its products were determined to be the source of a nationwide Salmonella outbreak that sickened hundreds, and the weekly litany of food recalls for contamination with pathogenic bacteria, allergens, or for other causes, consumers are paying more attention to the origins of their food.

With this in mind, Food Safety News set out to learn more about food trace back and traceability. We spoke with representatives from Scoring Ag, HarvestMark, Top Ten Produce, Recall InfoLink, and HCL Technologies about what they’re doing to help the food industry trace products from farm to consumer. We’ll be featuring an interview with each in this series on traceability.

Top Ten Produce

“What you need to know about Top Ten Produce is that it’s about people.” This is the first thing that executive director of Top Ten Produce John Bailey said in an interview with Food Safety News. “It’s about know your farmer, know your food,” he says. Top Ten Produce follows a local traceability program, including person, place, and item.

By snapping a picture of the barcode with a cell phone, or entering the data into the computer, consumers will immediately know the farmer who produced that particular food product, his or her name and life story, the farm, as well as information about the product itself. The grower also has the option of including pictures and a video to connect with his consumer.

Top Ten Produce focuses on independent farms. “All of our growers are rugged individualists, typically small, almost exclusively a million dollars or less,” says Bailey. “We’re in 10 states, so it’s rapidly expanding, but at the same time, we’re not seeking out the traditional business that the other companies are going for.”

Bailey advocates focusing on smaller, independent farmers because of the Top Ten Produce personal approach, as it tends to hone in on what a consumer wants. “Today’s consumer wants to support their local growers, they want to support a real person, they want to know the person they’re buying from and trust that person,” says Bailey. “But, not everyone can get to the farmer’s market. So, we have them meet real growers themselves through social media.” Consumers are able to communicate back and forth with every single grower that is growing under the brand.

“Consumers can learn to know their farmer–to know that there’s a real person behind the brand. And, that’s the whole point of Top Ten,” says Bailey. “Be your own brand. Be yourself. You can really be yourself.”

And, for those consumers who use Twitter, they simply have to mention the farmer’s grower number–a state abbreviation and number–and the comments will appear on the grower’s profile. A direct communication can then ensue.

Consumers aren’t the only ones to benefit. Much like HarvestMark and ScoringAg, Top Ten Produce benefits everyone along the food chain. “You can have a recall of a product and it’s going to trace back only to one farm, even if that farm is intermingled in the beginning,” says Bailey. “It’s the precision that the retailer will like.”

And, like the other two systems, Top Ten Produce also works in real-time. It is not the quickness that Bailey believes is essential during a recall, however. Bailey focuses on the preciseness.  Using an analogy with cars, Bailey suggests that each food item has a specific identity, just like a car has a one of a kind, distinguishable Vehicle Identification Number (VIN).  If a factory produces thousands of an item, consumers are able to identify which one product is under recall.  “Our recall is specific to the farm,” says Bailey.

While it does have plans for any product used on a small independent farm to become part of the system, Top Ten Produce currently only focuses on fresh produce. And unlike HarvestMark where there’s no limit to where you can source your product from, Top Ten Produce zeroes in on solely American farms. “We’re really encouraging local search systems,” says Bailey. “It’s nice to build a relationship with people in your own community that give back to your own community.”

Bailey acknowledges the fact that that there are many farmers who resist these trace back programs. “[Farmers] are running a small operation on a thin margin,” says Bailey. “It’s going to cost them to get a number to even begin the program. Then, they have to figure out how to use the program. They’re going to set it up, so there’s a significant capital contribution and tremendous time contribution for something they’re not getting any value out of.”

Bailey suggests, however, that Top Ten Produce provides a return investment on a system that farmers believe they get no benefit from. “We connect them directly to their consumer, so now they can talk to the actual people buying their produce,” says Bailey.

With the high profile of foodborne illness outbreaks that caused the infamous case of Stephanie Smith, a 22-year-old girl who was left paralyzed after eating an E. coli-contaminated hamburger produced by Cargill and the Peanut Corporation of America’s demise after its products were determined to be the source of a nationwide Salmonella outbreak that sickened hundreds, and the weekly litany of food recalls for contamination with pathogenic bacteria, allergens, or for other causes, consumers are paying more attention to the origins of their food.

With this in mind, Food Safety News set out to learn more about food trace back and traceability.  We spoke with representatives from Scoring Ag, HarvestMark, Top Ten Produce, Recall InfoLink, and HCL Technologies about what they’re doing to help the food industry trace products from farm to consumer.  We’ll be featuring an interview with each in this series on traceability.

HarvestMark

Another leader in food traceability is HarvestMark, which also provides insight to consumers, retailers, wholesalers, distributors, and everyone else involved in the food chain. With 1.5 billion items under its wing, HarvestMark has made headway in the last 18 months.

Like ScoringAg, HarvestMark aids the food channel in product ambiguity in case of a recall. “HarvestMark is like a license plate,” says Elliot Grant, founder of HarvestMark. “It gives every item of produce a unique identity.”

Logging onto the HarvestMark Website or using the iPhone app gives consumers the opportunity to explore information the handler chooses to share with them. This information can range from date of harvest to pesticides used, in addition to all the traditional harvest event data from a critical safety perspective, according to Grant. “We can give you information you can’t find anywhere else about the product in your hand,” says Grant.

According to Grant, HarvestMark works in conjunction with approximately 35 labeling and packaging converters across the world, who also use the technology. “Because we’re implemented on labels and clamshells, we have to work with a lot of the label manufacturers that the growers use. We spent the last few years working with these label companies, getting them equipped,” says Grant. “Nobody even comes close to that kind of ecosystem.”

HarvestMark focuses much of its attention on item-level traceability, which centers mainly on individual items rather than cases. And, the benefits of this are boundless, according to Grant. After conducting five research studies in the last four years, Grant says the consumer they know favors traceable food. “Something like 70 to 80 percent of people considerably say they prefer traceable food,” says Grant. “And, when we ask them why, they say it gives them peace of mind.” With the grower willing to share information, the consumer feels confident and possesses greater trust with the food they put away.
    
According to Grant, HarvestMark also gives consumers the ability to provide feedback about products to the grower–positive or negative.  Consumers can share comments with the producer or retailer, and the producer can share this information with the retailer as well.  Farmers receive messages that inform them with the time and location that the consumer has eaten the product, in addition to when and where the grower picked the item.

“If you’re a strawberry shipper, for example, you obtain all these variables–what do I plant, how do I water, how do I harvest, how do I train my crew–to provide fresh high quality produce in the consumer’s kitchen,” says Grant. “It’s very hard for the farmer to optimize that without getting feedback from the consumer.”

If consumers trace a product, but choose not to provide any feedback, HarvestMark captures an IP address, as well as the date of the tracing, and is able to notify the farmer how long it takes a particular product to reach the market, as well as the quality of the item when it arrived. “For the first time, the grower can see all the way through the supply chain,” says Grant.

And, all these benefits don’t even include the food safety advantages.

“From a business point of view, most food is perfectly safe day in and day out,” says Grant. “Real value for the consumer is peace of mind, loyalty, and feedback. For the farmer, it’s feedback that is meaningful and for the retailer, for them to be able to improve quality and freshness is their goal.”
   
According to Grant, HarvestMark possesses a couple of data centers where they host all the information for their customers.  Every item that is harvested and shipped gets a record of where it went and where it was picked. When a consumer checks, the system tracks that data as well. “In many ways, we’re a data management company,” says Grant.

Consumer information is kept anonymous unless the consumer chooses to provide their name and address. If they choose to remain anonymous, the information is received simply as an IP address. Consumers also have the option of leaving their e-mail address, in case they wish to open a much more personal and direct connection with their grower.

In addition to the tech-savvy iPhone app, HarvestMark has a rating button, where consumers can rate products. This allows growers to see how they stack up against others in the U.S., like with the Netflix rating system.
   
As a major player in the produce traceability world, HarvestMark is able to provide nationwide support. And, due to their widespread influence, HarvestMark has become a trust brand in traceability, gaining a large network of partners and retailers who employ the technology in their factories.
   
Similar to ScoringAg, HarvestMark also works in real-time. “When there’s a recall, we want to be able to tell a consumer right away if their product is affected or not,” says Grant. In fact, when Freshway Farms recalled Romaine lettuce, traces on salad on HarvestMark appeared within the hour that the recall was announced to the press. “We were able to put up a message that read ‘yes, there is a recall going on right now. It affects Freshway Farms, and this bag is not affected,'” explains Grant. “We were able to reinforce the confidence in those consumers that the bag they bought from that brand was fine to eat.”
   
And, much like ScoringAg, HarvestMark is cost effective. It costs a fraction of a penny to put a HarvestMark code on a product, according to Grant. And, there is minimal hardware required as well.
   
HarvestMark not only informs consumers if there is a safety problem, but also provides notification when there’s a new traceable item in local supermarkets and tips on how to choose specific products.
   
“Traceability gives the shipper and operator information that they can use to make their products fresher, get to the market faster, respond to consumers’ feedback, and make choices about variety, harvesting, and the shipper who has implemented traceability. As a grower, there are not many ways to distinguish yourself from another, aside from competing from seasonality, Grant suggests. “Traceability provides a really powerful source of differentiation in both consumer preferen
ce and in operations,” he says.

For years, the term “food traceability” has permeated the media, and there has been a greater emphasis on consumers’ right to know where their food comes from.

With the high profile of foodborne illness outbreaks that caused the infamous case of Stephanie Smith, a 22-year-old girl who was left paralyzed after eating an E. coli-contaminated hamburger produced by Cargill and the Peanut Corporation of America’s demise after its products were determined to be the source of a nationwide Salmonella outbreak that sickened hundreds, and the weekly litany of food recalls for contamination with pathogenic bacteria, allergens, or for other causes, consumers are paying more attention to the origins of their food.

With this in mind, Food Safety News set out to learn more about food trace back and traceability. We spoke with representatives from Scoring Ag, HarvestMark, Top Ten Produce, Recall InfoLink, and HCL Technologies about what they’re doing to help the food industry trace products from farm to consumer. We’ll be featuring an interview with each in this series on traceability.

Coping with Information Overload

“I’ve stopped eating red meat because I really don’t know what it’s in it anymore, or where it’s coming from,” said one 23-year-old consumer from Manhattan, who preferred to remain nameless for this story. And, more now than ever, consumers are demanding the right to information about the food they are consuming.

In the modern era, where foodborne illness outbreaks have occurred, distrust is created between the consumers and producers, lawyer Denis Stearns, a partner in the Marler Clark law firm and a professor at Seattle University School of Law, suggests. Unlike in the past, where face-to-face transactions dominated the way people exchanged food, consumers today have a smaller connection to where their food is coming from.

As the food distribution system has evolved, technology has hindered the progression of food trace back systems.  Over the years, however, technology has slowly caught up, changing and developing to improve traceability.

“It’s a whole supply chain that exists. It’s not just one or two entities that are involved in this,” says Ravi Sankar of HCL Technologies. “That’s why it has always been very difficult in the past to pull this information together.” Today, technology has advanced so that individuals can build interfaces into different systems and collect trace back information with little to no difficulty, explains Sankar.

Because the volume of transactions between the number of items and suppliers is also quite large today, Sankar suggests that policies should be required to ensure that the only vital information is recorded to avoid overload. “Information storage has become more inexpensive as time has gone on,” says Sankar. “In the past, that would have been a big barrier.”

To aid in providing consumers with peace of mind, various businesses and companies are pooling their forces and creating different technologies and management data systems that can trace back food to its origin.  These companies are utilizing the available technology to ensure not only the public’s health, but also making certain that the suppliers along the food chain, whether it be the retailer, the wholesaler, the distributor, or even the producer, are protected as well.

ScoringAg

“Food safety is about communicating between the farmer, the trucker, the distributor and everybody in that food chain saying, ‘I did a very good job getting that produce to you in a clean form,'” says the President of ScoringAg, William Kanitz. “And, that’s what ScoringAg does.”

ScoringAg is an online record-keeping system that hoards data for a wide host of products. “It can handle any product on the face of this earth, including food machinery,” says Kanitz.  It provides an easily understandable, instant, and inexpensive trace back system that can help in case of a recall.

To search a product’s origin and profile, registered users must enter a barcode, RFID, or SSI-EID–internal tracking codes–which are all printed on the item itself. According to Kanitz, in the case of a meat product, the animal’s origin, picture, tag, vaccination dates, feed, certifications, any slaughter tests received, and/or other additional information the handler chooses to incorporate appears on the product’s online profile. ScoringAg is a database that backs up labeling, Kanitz says.

Every individual involved in the food channel–retailers, suppliers, wholesalers, growers, distributors, consumers, and more can use ScoringAg information. “It actually creates a link between [people],” says Kanitz. “Everyone along the way can know that they can see the attributes, they can see the variety, they can see when it was planted, or who it was certified by.”

The web-based system is an empty database that virtually anyone can sign in and take over themselves. ScoringAg is also available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. And, French and German translations are in the process of being created, according to Kanitz.

What ScoringAg prides itself on is the immediacy and real-time in which the system works. “Whether you have the smallest farmer in the world or the poorest farmer in the world, they all have almost the same speed as someone like our mega farms that we have today,” says Kanitz.

The trace back happens quickly–in not 24 hours, not 48 hours, but seconds, according to Kanitz. “When somebody needs information, they need to look at that information and asses it to make a purchasing decision immediately,” continues Kanitz. “It benefits everyone along the chain because it erupts in real-time.”

This system is cost effective, too. Anyone can purchase ScoringAg records for $10, depending on the volume of entities, the volume of locations, the volume of pictures and/or video that you’re using, Kanitz mentions.

According to Kanitz, ScoringAg has the cheapest labeling system there is with $0.0025 for a trace back code to stick on a product. ScoringAg is the lowest cost operating trace back system worldwide, he says. “You don’t need an exorbitant cost to have a traceability system,” says Kanitz. “You need some common sense and the right equipment. You can have a complete trace back system for a low cost or you can have a partial system for an expensive cost, the way I see it. The low cost system will always win.”

Consumers can access ScoringAg, but they receive a public version of the records that don’t include the grower’s name, unless the grower chooses to include that information. “The same we protect our growers and shippers and retailers and wholesalers, we have to protect that information,” Kanitz says. “In this case here, there’s a certain amount of risk and people need to know they can go to a place and there’s products and you can see more attributes about them.”

What makes this system unique, Kanitz says, is that ScoringAg is not a traceability system, but a trace back system. “The starting record stays intact from the original starting point to the final destination and the consumer can see the public part of the record, including picture and video, if uploaded,” says Kanitz. According to Kanitz, ScoringAg provides complete trace back up and down, not just a portion of the traceability. “One-step up and one-step down trace back systems are proven inadequate in case of a recall,” he says.

According to a recent article published in Fresh Plaza, ScoringAg is the only system that facilitates all worldwide partners in the food chain to upload from their internal sys
tems, trace back relevant data, and move it efficiently to the next supplier within the chain.

ScoringAg also can provide item level, case, and bin trace back with records for all agricultural products–raw, processed, or commingled, according to Kanitz.

As a professional farmer himself, Kanitz knows the fine points the industry. For now, Kanitz devotes his time to help other people, so farmers can sell their safe food no matter what country they’re in. “If it’s made into food, then we need to know whether it’s compatible with what we eat,” Kanitz says. “There’s a certain amount of risk and this is going to keep on expanding until we can fix it. The objective is if I know what made me ill, then we can help the guy who raised it or trucked it or processed it, so he can make an adjustment and he can keep on producing food for the population.”

“ScoringAg is food safety. ScoringAg is trace back. ScoringAg is foodborne pathogen prevention. We have all those different attributes in ScoringAg and you can document them,” says Kanitz. ” And, in order to see your product worldwide anymore, you’ve got to have records.”

Part I focused on the science behind the technology. 

Ground Beef

In the last several years, there have been a series of recalls and media cases due to contaminated meat.  In 1998, Sara Lee had to recall millions of pounds of meat after a number of people died in a Listeria outbreak.  In 2000, a three-year-old girl passed away in Milwaukee after eating watermelon that was cross-contaminated with E. coli O157:H7-contaminated beef tri-tip.  And, let’s not forget Stephanie Smith, the 20-year-old dancer who contracted E. coli and was left paralyzed after eating a hamburger at a family barbeque in 2007.  Smith developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) and spent nine months in the hospital, including two months in a medically induced coma.  All this from a hamburger.

Most recently in the news, a Colorado company has issued a recall of 66,000 pounds of ground bison meat after federal agricultural officials linked it to E. coli.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that the recalled bison meat was sold in supermarkets nationwide between May 21 and May 27.

“I personally have cared for a little girl who died of Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS) from eating a hamburger,” epidemiologist Harry Hull says. “It just tears up my heart every time I think about it. Those kinds of things are by and large, avoidable. There are kids dying every year in this country unnecessarily because we don’t irradiate ground beef.”

Some symptoms of E. coli include bloody diarrhea, stomach cramps, and in most severe cases, red blood cells can fracture and disintegrate, causing the kidneys to shut down, according to Hull. Children, pregnant women, and older men and women are more prone to foodborne illnesses.

Ron Eustice of the Minnesota Beef Council claims that there has been an increase in the amount of samples positive for E. coli O157:H7 during the last three years. The number of positive samples in 2010, he says, is greater than the number of positive samples in 2009. “We’ve got to educate our consumers to cook their hamburgers to 160 degrees, to use a temperature thermometer or as an additional tool, to use food irradiation to make sure that that hamburger is safe,” Eustice says. “It is an additional tool to help to protect the lives of our consumers, to protect the lives of our children, and vulnerable adults.”

Ground beef and meat have been a source of E. coli illnesses for years. As these incidents continue to increase and filter through the media, people are looking towards irradiation more and more.

Today, fresh and frozen ground beef is available at thousands of supermarkets nationwide. Frozen irradiated patties are available through mail-order, home delivery. Omaha Steaks and Schwan’s both produce irradiated beef.

“I love nothing more than eating a good hamburger.  I’m a real Iowa kid.  Today you can engineer in hamburger production a very high level of safety,” Mike Osterholm, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota, says.

Lettuce & Spinach

When asked if they remember an E. coli outbreak from recent history, many consumers are quick to recall the 2006 E. coli outbreak traced to Dole baby spinach in which 204 people became ill with E. coli infections and three people–two elderly women and a young boy–died.  Recently, Ready Pac Foods Inc. has recalled hundreds of baby spinach packages in California, Washington, and Arizona, due to fear that the company’s spinach may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7.  No illnesses have been found in connection with this recall.

Due to a number of outbreaks of E. coli O157:H7 several years back, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced in August of 2008 that it will allow the irradiation on fresh iceberg lettuce and spinach to kill bacteria such as E. coli and Salmonella.  While some critics argue that the technology would remove essential vitamins and create incentive for farmers to slack on sanitation, many suggest that irradiation is precisely the answer. According to Bill Marler, a nationally known food safety advocate and attorney who represents victims of foodborne illness outbreaks, irradiation will kill bacteria inside and outside of the edible plant tissues that regular washing will not likely eliminate. Marler also suggests that food irradiation will enhance food safety, prevent illnesses, outbreaks, and recalls. “Irradiation is not a replacement for good agricultural practices and management practices on the farm and during harvest, transportation, and processing,” Marler says.

Some critics associate “irradiation” with “atomic” and “nuclear”, generating a level of uncertainty and hesitance on the process, especially for produce items. According to experts like Marler, the primary reason consumers might not buy irradiated foods is lack of information about the risks and benefits and often, even misinformation.

When Eustice gives lectures on irradiation, he has the crowd complete a survey about their attitude towards irradiation before and after they have all the information. “We move from 50 to 60 percent of positive attitudes before to as high as 80 or even 90 percent positive after they’ve had some information,” Eustice says. “We know that there’s 10 to 15 percent of the population that are negative towards not only irradiation, but every technology that’s out there. There are simply anti-technology people.”

Experts like Osterholm suggest that often it’s not a lack of information, but simply misinformation. “There is so much misinformation spread out there by people who really don’t have consumers at heart–they have their own personal agendas,” Osterholm says. They don’t have to be accountable for why parents learn why their child is not only infected by E. coli infection and has HUS, but is about to die. These people don’t have to deal with that. And, for those of us that do, we see such a needless waste of life because of this misinformation about food irradiation.”

Spices

According to Eustice, one-third, or 175 million pounds, of the commercial spices that are marketed in the United States today are irradiated. Unlike meat and produce, which are required to come with a Radura label, spices have no such condition. Irradiated spices do not need to be labeled if they are used as ingredients in other food products. “[Spices] are a very small part of the mix. They’re mostly used as an ingredient in sausages and salami and other products,” Eustice says.

Earlier this year, Daniele Inc., a Rhode Island company, recalled its pepper-coated salami products after state and federal public health officials identified the pepper the company used to coat the products as the source of a nationwide Salmonella outbreak.  At least 272 people became ill with Salmonella after consuming the products.  For years, spices have been irradiated in the United States, but the process has been hidden. Due to use of spices as ingredients in other foods, especially ready-to-eat foods, irradiated spices have not been marketed to the public. According to the
FDA regulations, such products don’t have to be labeled as containing irradiated ingredients.

While a large amount of commercial spices are irradiated today, McCormick & Co. is one major seller of retail spices that does not use irradiation on any of its consumer products. According to a 2010 article in CIDRAP, Laurie Harrsen, a company spokeswoman said that McCormick’s uses steam sterilization and has no plans of irradiation, due to the belief of insufficient consumer acceptance of the process. The company does, however, use irradiation if specifically asked to do so by an industrial food customer.

Aside from irradiation, steam sterilization and fumigation are used to kill microorganisms in spices. But, according to Eustice, there’s a growing movement towards irradiation of spices. “It’s the most effective technology in that it does not change the flavor of the spices where any type of a heat treatment could effect the quality and the flavor of those spices,” Eustice says.

Where the Future Lies

Today, more than 40 countries use food irradiation as an additional tool for food safety. And, while there are still those who remain skeptical about the process, there has been a 300 percent increase in the amount of irradiated produce that’s being marketed in the United States in the last two and a half to three years, according to Eustice. “Three years ago, 10 million pounds of irradiated produce was being marketed and consumed in the U.S.  Today, it’s is 30 million pounds of irradiated produce,” Eustice says.

And, the market continues to expand across borders. Many international countries, such as Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, as well as Mexico and India are marketing irradiated food items in the U.S.

“I hope over time that it becomes the norm,” Osterholm says. “We have to do a lot of educating to the public so that they become more rational about what’s happening. I think we also really need to help educate policy makers and leaders about why if they were to take certain steps to ensure that food irradiation was more routinely used, we can have dramatic reduction of illnesses.”

Osterholm also suggests that we take the statistics and data on the number of outbreaks and deaths and use it to improve the system and prevent it from ever happening again. “We do very little with the data we collect in this country on foodborne disease occurrence.  It is a systematic way, bringing back that into everyday food production, food delivery, food consumption, and making certain we do everything we can to eliminate the possible sources,” Osterholm says.

For now, while food irradiation continues to grow nationwide, it remains a controversy among consumers.

“For many people, foodborne disease will be an inconvenience, for some it’ll be a serious illness and for others, it’ll be a death sentence,” Osterholm says. “I think we have a hard time conveying to the public, go ahead, eat everyday and enjoy your food, and now occasionally you’ll get foodborne disease if you are careless about how you prepare your food or if the product you purchase is contaminated at the source and there is nothing you can do about it.”

Eustice has had his mother-in-law over for dinner once a week for years. When it’s hamburger night in the Eustice household, Ron serves his mother-in-law only one kind of hamburger. “For the last ten years, the only kind of ground beef that has been served in our home is irradiated ground beef,” Eustice says. “In fact, that’s what I’m having for dinner tonight.”

With summer underway, barbeque season is in full swing. For some, that means a fresh salad, for others it means grilled chicken, and for others it’s biting into a juicy hamburger. Not to mention the spices that go on top as a marinade! The majority of these people will wash their lettuce and spinach before tossing their salad and grill their chicken and hamburger till it looks good and ready. Ninety-four percent of people will not use a temperature thermometer when cooking. And, most likely, none of these individuals will get a food borne illness from the food. In fact, most will continue to simply wash their lettuce and grill their beef and chicken the way they have been doing (without a thermometer) and will remain safe.

However, Ron Eustice, Executive Director of the Minnesota Beef Council, argues that this is not good enough. For those individuals, who are unaware of the ideal cooking temperature for a hamburger, there can be an additional measure undertaken to ensure food safety, he says. Enter: Food Irradiation.

The Science Behind the Science

For years, there has been a host of misinformation swarming around the topic of food irradiation, its process and its effects on food. But, with words like ionizing radiation, gamma rays, x-rays, and electron beam transfer, you’re bound to get a quizzical look from the public here and there. Let’s break it down for all of you that are not so technology and science savvy.

Food irradiation, in simplest terms, is a process that can eliminate disease-causing pathogens. It exposes food items, either packaged or in bulk, to varying doses of high-energy, invisible radiation. The process kills harmful microorganisms by disrupting their DNA, so they can no longer reproduce. Smaller doses can modify sprouting and ripening, while higher doses can potentially alter molecules in microorganisms, which can lead to a decrease in food spoilage and foodborne illnesses like E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella, Listeria, and more. According to Mike Osterholm, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota, “food irradiation is a dosage-related phenomenon, just like milk pasteurization. You can go all the way from killing the pathogens, which would be the minimum pasteurization level, to complete sterilization, which kills everything that is alive in that product.”

Products such as ground beef, poultry, and produce, like spinach and Indian mangoes, and even spices are among the many food items that currently undergo food irradiation. Today, any food product that is marketed in supermarkets is required to include a Radura symbol.

The Upside vs. The Flip Side

“If we had the use of widespread irradiation today in red meat and poultry, and some areas of vegetable production, we would save many, countless lives every year, among people who die needlessly because of foodborne disease,” Osterholm says in support of food irradiation.

According to Eustice, food irradiation is the most effective technology that has the potential to reduce or eliminate harmful foodborne pathogens. According to a 2008 presentation, Eustice claimed that E. coli O157:H7 levels are reduced from 99.99 percent to 99.9999 percent after irradiation, Salmonella levels are reduced from 99 percent to 99.9 percent after irradiation, and Listeria pathogens are reduced from 99.9 percent to 99.99 percent after irradiation.

While cooking food to an ideal temperature can also remove harmful bacteria, Eustice argues that the consumer does not know proper cooking temperatures for many foods that are susceptible for pathogenic bacteria. “Every food item has a different temperature that would kill potentially pathogenic bacteria. The cooking temperature for poultry is different than the cooking temperature for ground beef” Eustice says. “And, ninety-four percent of people do not use a thermometer on a regular basis.” Due to faulty equipment, lack of knowledge of the different temperatures to kill bacteria in particular food items, and often simply lack of equipment, Eustice proposes irradiation as an additional tool of food safety.

Among the other benefits, Eustice suggests that food irradiation eliminates insects in fruits and vegetables, delays ripening of fruits and vegetables, extends freshness, and all the while, food is left virtually unchanged with no loss in vitamins or minerals.

While some opponents argue that extending the shelf life of many food products is unnatural and unhealthy, proponents, like Eustice, state that it is in fact beneficial economically, as well as from a social welfare standpoint. According to Eustice, 30 to 40 percent of the food in India is wasted before it ever gets to the people. “We know that India has a tremendous need to feed the expanding population, but when many food items do not get to the consumer because they spoil in transit or in warehouses that is a catastrophe–not only for that country, but also for those hungry people,” Eustice says. “We’ve got a population in this world that will reach 9 billion people by the year 2050. We have approximately 6 billion today. We do not have more land. We will have less land in the future. We have to use technology that is available to us today to increase food production to feed another 3 billion people within our lifetime.”

Opponents argue that by extending the shelf life of food products, people are prone to eating unnatural food. According to Osterholm, however, spoilage isn’t the problem. “The problem is the loss of that food,” Osterholm says.  “Removing spoilage bacteria has very little to do with health. It has everything to do with the amount of product consumed.”

Food irradiation is environmentally friendly, proponents also argue. “We use water to grow food, we use input such as fertilizer to make the crop grow, we use labor, we use petroleum to transport the crop to the market,” Eustice says. “And 30 to 40 percent of the product actually goes out the back door and it is put in a trash bin and then eventually in a landfill–that is a tremendous cost to our environment. Food irradiation can double or triple the shelf life of most of the food items. To me, that’s the most environmentally friendly technology that we have.”

Other processes that are known to kill microorganisms include steam pasteurization. While pasteurization adds a thermal level of disinfection to a carcass of some product, irradiation is a cold process. According to Osterholm, the water activity or the steam increases the lethality due to the given temperature. “The term steam pasteurization is a misnomer,” Osterholm says. “Pasteurization is a process where you make the assumption that all potential pathogens are either destroyed or at least rendered incapable of reproducing by some host. In this case, steam pasteurization reduces, and in some cases, it reduces substantially the amount of bacteria in the carcass or any other surface that the steam past is applied. But, it does not eliminate it. It gave people a false sense of security that somehow that organism was now eliminated.”

And, the benefits don’t stop there. According to a recent taste-test conducted by the Minnesota Beef Council in Korea, people were unable to distinguish a difference between irradiated food and non-irradiated products.  In fact, the Beef Council has conducted n
umerous taste studies, including one with the Food Irradiation Processing Alliance, where they tested irradiated spinach. “People preferred the irradiated spinach to the one over the non-irradiated in some cases,” Eustice says. “It is impossible for the average person to distinguish the taste between irradiated food and non-irradiated food when the manufacturer follows the guidelines and recommendations for the proper dosage, like anything else,” Eustice says.

It is also important to note that according to Eustice and studies carried out by the Beef Council, irradiated food items do not lose vitamins. Like any process, including cooking, canning, and freezing, nutritional content is lost. According to the FDA, the nutritional loss from irradiation is insignificant. And, in the case of fruit, some irradiated fruit can be shipped riper, and thus results in higher vitamin A and C content, Eustice stated in a 2008 presentation.  “It is a very environmentally friendly technology that will do for ground beef and produce and other foods what pasteurization did for milk,” Eustice says.

Food irradiation is permitted in more than 40 countries. Among the number of groups that support food irradiation are the American Medical Association, World Health Association, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Institute of Food Technologists, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, as well as every scientific and medical organization. “[Food irradiation] has unanimous endorsement of the scientific and medical communities. There is no other technology that has unanimous endorsement,” Eustice says.