Traceability Requirements and Developing Countries

Most food exporters from developing countries would be able to comply with the government-mandated minimum legal documentation requirements on traceability. It is the stricter private requirements of the buyers³ that are a burden to exporters. These private requirements have developed in response to consumer demands and buyers' assessment of financial risk, and to fulfill the conditions of free trade agreements (FTAs) and the WTO. For example, food for export must conform to various standards such as Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), Good Manufacturing Practices, and HACCP. In cases where value-added food products were produced using raw materials from many sources, the documentation and traceability required by the buyers to ensure food safety and to certify sufficient processing threshold (SPT) under relevant FTA standards can be overwhelming to exporters.

Developing countries aiming to export to the lucrative markets of industrialized countries must have adequate information about buyers' requirements, as well as a solid system for collecting and presenting the necessary information. However, because the food supply chains in developing countries are typically fragmented—relying on many smallholder farmers—and are not necessarily organized into supportive producer associations that can provide the training the food producers would need to create traceability documentation, many of these smallholders will be excluded.

Figure 1 [ PDF 41.8KB | 1 page ] is a simplified depiction of how goods flow in domestic and international food supply chains. Even in the simplest export chains, food products change hands multiple times. As a result, fully traceable documentation of food product movement quickly becomes very complicated. In addition, each buyer may also have their own requirements from suppliers,⁴ including slightly different documentation that results in duplicated or time-consuming efforts.

These international trade requirements are already forcing producers who want access to international markets to conform to certifiable standards. However, meeting these standards still does not ensure that a full traceability system—monitoring all movements of the food product—is in place. Standards may require records of certain procedures and processes but they do not necessarily provide a full and reliable accounting of food movement in the supply chain.

Traceability is becoming an increasingly common element in many more complex supply chain management systems, such as those that monitor regulatory compliance, quality control, environmental impact, or food safety. In addition to traceability of movement, these more complex systems may include detailed information on production inputs. These inputs could include vaccinations, agro-chemical use, hygienic conditions of the processing environment, or any other information essential for maintaining the trust of buyers and compliance with relevant regulations.

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Comment(s)

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1. Prof. J. George
   (posted 10 June 2009 / 06:30:36 PM)
   
   A good study indeed to keep one updated with the new developments in the area of food safety. The authors have in a short and concise WP givena concise lessons fron the study. They need to be complimented on the effort. The authors must be encouraged to develop this WP into a full blown research paper. However, some comments that must find placein the full paper are as follows: (1) Can these lessons be generalised over different developing countries and production landscape where issues of livelihood and food security are paramount? (2) The public sector certainly needs to play a dominant role and hence the funding quantum and pattern needs a different exclusive treatment to make it more localised. Who will do it? (3) How do we get this traceability into a major concern as in Japan itself only 20% are following/participating in the ITES initiative for traceability.
   (4) Two case study products have certain limitations in other developing countries as they have a different definition of smallholder producer and these two products are not produced on an industrial scale dimensions. What adjustements are required or needs to incorported to the study to make it acceptable/practicable on wider spectrum of developing countries?