Hi, this is PMA PR Director Julia Stewart. In the recording that follows, Gary Fleming mentions that the Produce Traceability Initiative will track three pieces of information about each case of produce through the supply chain. After this recording was made, the PTI amended its plans, and decided that only two pieces of information were needed: the GTIN, and a lot number. As you listen to this, keep that in mind. You can find more information at www.producetraceability.org.

Hello, this is Kathy Means with Produce Marketing Association, and welcome back to PMA’s audio series, “Ask Dr. Bob Whitaker.” Joining me again today is PMA Vice President for Technology and Standards, Gary Fleming. This is the third of a three-part series being recorded with Gary about the Produce Traceability Initiative and its work to bring chain-wide, electronic traceability to the produce industry. Gary, thank you for joining us again.

Last time we talked about the initiative’s plan for making chain-wide, electronic traceability a reality within our industry by 2012. To get to that reality, though, our industry members are going to need some help. What kind of assistance do we have for them?

Gary Fleming:

We will have lots of help for them, no worries.
The first critical step is to read the Industry Action Plan from the Produce Traceability Initiative. It defines the steps needed to get the industry to chain-wide electronic traceability, and the timetable for getting those steps completed.The steps are very straightforward and are presented in the order in which they should be implemented.

You’ll recall from the first two parts of these series that the PTI is calling for the inclusion of two pieces of information on every case of produce, to trace that case through the supply chain: a Global Trade Identification Number, or GTIN and the lot number. These two milestones called for in that action plan are to get a company prefix from the GS1 organization and then to assign GTIN numbers to your different case configurations. So, the second step I recommend would be to read the GTIN Assignment Strategy, found on all three of the sponsoring trade associations’ Web sites. This document will assist companies in creating their 14-digit GTINs for their case configurations. Although this strategy is simply a guiding tool, it will help ensure consistency in GTIN assignments from company to company, and will also help minimize the amount of numbers buyers and sellers will have to manage.

Third, it would be helpful for companies to read the document entitled “Fresh Produce Traceability: A Guide to Implementation”, which was the result of a traceability pilot project we did in 2006. This guide will give companies some further detail about the GTIN and its associated barcodes. It will also help with subsequent pieces of data that need to be referenced for efficient traceback, such as shipping and receiving information, that is expected to be stored, but not shown, on each and every case of produce. This document is also free of charge and found on both PMA and CPMA’s Web sites.

Fourth, be on the lookout for educational sessions at PMA’s Fresh Summit and other trade shows from both United Fresh and CPMA to help spread the word. We will also be jointly creating numerous Webinars and additional recordings, such as this one, to help industry members become educated and informed on this important topic.

Fifth, we are creating best practices for both case labeling and pallet labeling, as well as best practices for communicating this information between trading partners, in order to assist industry members on (1) ensuring consistency on the information shown on cases and pallets (2) to help minimize the amount of labels needed for cases and pallets and (3) to help expedite retrieving information off of each and every case on a pallet. This last point helps alleviate the concern over the amount of time and labor that would be needed to read each and every case that comes off of a truck. Not to worry folks, the best practices will offer multiple solutions to address this.

Lastly, you have myself and my peers at the other trade associations – Jane Proctor from CPMA. and Dr. David Gombas from United Fresh – to answer any questions our listeners may still have.

Kathy:

Thank you, Gary, for explaining what we’re doing to help industry members achieve their part of this new vision for traceability. I’m sure our listeners are glad to know their associations are working together to bring about workable, efficient solutions to this industry challenge.

Our listeners can find out more about PMA’s and the Produce Traceability Initiative’s work by visiting PMA’s Web site at www.pma.com. Go to the “Member Resources” section, then to Technology and Standards, then to Traceability. (For those of you reading this transcript, the link is: http://www.pma.com/cig/tech/traceability.cfm.)

Please join us again next time, when we’ll take on a new topic. Until then, ‘ bye for now.

Hi, this is PMA PR Director Julia Stewart. In the recording that follows, Gary Fleming mentions that the Produce Traceability Initiative will track three pieces of information about each case of produce through the supply chain. After this recording was made, the PTI amended its plans, and decided that only two pieces of information were needed: the GTIN, and a lot number. As you listen to this, keep that in mind. You can find more information at www.producetraceability.org.

Hello, this is Kathy Means, PMA Vice President of Government Relations and Public Affairs, and welcome back to PMA’s audio series, “Ask Dr. Bob Whitaker.” Joining us again today is PMA Vice President for Technology and Standards, Gary Fleming. This is the second of a three-part series being recorded with Gary about the Produce Traceability Initiative and its work to bring chain-wide, electronic traceability to the produce industry. Gary, thank you for joining us again.

Last time we talked about why the produce industry needs to step up our traceability capability to be able to do chain-wide, electronic traceability capability. You mentioned that the Produce Traceability Initiative has a plan for making that happen, can you talk about that plan some more?

Gary Fleming:

Sure, Kathy. So, recognizing that our industry needed to be able to trace product more effectively, PMA joined forces in 2007 with the Canadian Produce Marketing Association and United Fresh Produce Association to create the Produce Traceability Initiative. We’d been working to enhance traceability for many years, and now the goal of the initiative is to assist produce companies and those who buy and/or transport product to move toward a common standard to enhance whole-chain traceability. The initiative is guided by a steering committee of more than 50 produce retailers, wholesalers, distributors, packer-shippers and growers. This steering committee comes from across every link in the supply chain, to ensure that the solution they put forth will work for every industry member, regardless of business function and regardless of company size.

Recognizing that each member of the supply chain should already have its own internal traceability system, the initiative calls on each industry member to adapt their systems to include, at a minimum, two common pieces of information that can then be tracked among them to provid the needed connectivity that we’re missing now. That connectivity will now allow every case of produce to be traced as it moves through each link in the supply chain. It really is what I’d call a brilliantly simple solution.
Those common pieces of information to appear on each and every produce case are:

(1) a Global Trade Item Number (GTIN), which will identify who the “manufacturer” is (i.e., the owner of the brand that appears on the product case) and the type of product inside that case; and

(2) the lot number specifically identifying the lot or batch from where the product came.

Originally, the Initiative identified the inclusion of the Pack/Harvest or Batch date. However, due to the discussions recently held on August 20th at our last meeting, this date is now optional; as most growers and packers already have this date included as part of their Lot #.

Each case will carry these two pieces of information on a label in both human-readable form and in a barcode. Each link in the supply chain will eventually be expected to scan that information and store it in their computer systems. Once each handler of the product is given these two pieces of information – the GTIN and lot number – they can use this information to search their own internal traceability systems to retrieve the necessary information about the path of that case, one step forward and one step back. Those two pieces of information are like a baton that gets passed between Olympic relay runners – we can then track the path of the baton from the start to the finish lines.

The task force has just announced to industry some milestones and a timetable for moving the industry toward this vision of chain-wide, electronic traceability:

• First, each “brand owner” must obtain their company prefix from GS1, if they have not already done so.
• Second, each brand owner must assign 14-digit GTINs to their case configurations (and we’ve got some guidance on how to do that). Both the first and second milestones should be completed by March 1, 2009.
• Then by 3rd quarter, 2009, each brand owner should provide their GTINs and corresponding data to their buyers, so that when the GTIN is used, the buyers will know what specifics are behind the number.
• Fourth and fifth, packers will start labeling the GTIN and lot number on cases in both human-readable form and in a barcode by 3rd quarter, 2010.
• Sixth, by 1st quarter, 2011, each link in the chain that touches a case of produce must have the systems and capability to read and store the GTIN and lot number from each case of produce that is received.
• Seventh and finally, by 2012, each link in the chain must be able to read and store that information for every outbound case of produce

Seven relatively simple steps – the hardest part will be to modify existing business practices to capture this information and then the modification of existing programs and databases to store this information. There will be lots of help along the way to help companies make each step happen – but I’ll stop there, because we’re going to talk about those resources next time.

Kathy:

Thank you, Gary, for explaining the initiative’s vision, and timetable, for chain-wide electronic traceability. It certainly sounds reasonable, as you’d expect from a plan that was developed by companies from every spectrum of the supply chain. If anything, I would be concerned that regulators and legislators would expect us to be able to get this work done even faster than the group is proposing, because public health is at stake. They take that very seriously, as do we all.

Please join Gary and me next time, when he will talk about what help is available to industry members to assist them in doing their part to make this level of traceability possible. In the meantime, to find out more about PMA’s and the Produce Traceability Initiative’s work, visit PMA’s Web site at www.pma.com. Go to the “Member Resources” section, then to Technology and Standards, then to Traceability. (For those of you reading this transcript, the link is: http://www.pma.com/cig/tech/traceability.cfm.)

Goodbye for now.

Hi, this is PMA PR Director Julia Stewart. In the recording that follows, Gary Fleming mentions that the Produce Traceability Initiative will track three pieces of information about each case of produce through the supply chain. After this recording was made, the PTI amended its plans, and decided that only two pieces of information were needed: the GTIN, and a lot number. As you listen to this, keep that in mind. You can find more information at www.producetraceability.org.

Hello, this is PMA PR Director Julia Stewart and welcome back to PMA’s audio series, “Ask Dr. Bob Whitaker.” Joining us today is PMA Vice President for Technology and Standards, Gary Fleming. In fact, Gary will be joining us for the next several recordings, so that we can talk in depth about the Produce Traceability Initiative and its work to bring chain-wide, electronic traceability to the produce industry. Gary, thank you for being here.

Before I ask you to talk about the initiative’s work, let’s talk about the industry’s current traceability capability. Everyone should already be able to trace product one step forward, and one step back, on paper – that was required by a bioterrorism law in 2002. Gary, please tell our listeners why being able to trace product on paper isn’t good enough, why we need to do more.

Gary Fleming:

Thanks, Julia, and hello to our listeners.

You’re right, most in our industry already have basic traceability capability. As you noted, the Bioterrorism Act of 2002 requires every food company to be able to trace its products back one step, and forward one step. Everyone in our industry should be able to do this right now. And if you can’t, then you should know that you can be brought up on federal charges for failing to comply with the bioterrorism act.

However, recent foodborne illness outbreaks have demonstrated that we need to be able to do better. We should want to do better first and foremost to better protect public health, to prevent further illness and potentially to even save lives – but doing it better can also help limit our losses in the event product does have to be recalled.

You know, there was some talk during the recent Salmonella saintpaul foodborne illness outbreak that the federal government’s investigation was slowed down because the produce industry couldn’t trace back its product. That’s not entirely true, for the most part we could trace back product. (And I’m sure the folks who couldn’t will be dealt with accordingly by federal investigators.)

Part of the problem was that the investigation was looking for the wrong product – but part of the problem was also that our industry members gave federal investigators a hodge podge of records they had to sift through to try to find a trail. They gave them paper records – that required investigators to sift through thousands of pages. And every company’s record keeping system was different, tracking different pieces of information, which added yet another level of complexity for the investigators. Right now, every member of the produce industry has their own, individual proprietary solution for tracing product one step forward, one step back. The information stored and method used can vary company by company. Multiply that times all the different companies that, say, handle tomatoes or even peppers, and you can imagine how difficult a job an investigative team would have.

When lives – and livelihoods – may be at stake, that simply isn’t good enough. Consumers demand better, and regulators and legislators are demanding better. Keeping those records electronically can certainly help speed investigators’ traceback – and keeping records electronically that have common elements of information in them will speed it even more. Our industry has a lot at stake, it is in our best interests to take our traceability capability to the next level – or we may end up being required to do it by people who don’t understand our business.

The Produce Traceability Initiative was founded in 2007 to bring some commonality to these systems – to weave through that common thread, if you will, by requiring three pieces of common information to follow every carton of produce through the supply chain. But I’ll stop there, because I understand we are going to talk more about those three pieces of information next time.

Julia:

Thank you, Gary, for that explanation of why our industry needs to take traceability to the next level – to chain-wide traceability, and electronic traceability. To find out more about PMA’s and the Produce Traceability Initiative’s work, visit PMA’s Web site at www.pma.com. Go to the “Member Resources” section, then to Technology and Standards, then to Traceability. (For those of you reading this transcript, the link is: http://www.pma.com/cig/tech/traceability.cfm.)

To our listeners, please join us next time, when I will talk to Gary about the solution that the Produce Traceability Initiative has developed to help us achieve that vision of chain-wide, electronic traceability – and where our listeners can get help to achieve their part. Until next time…!