Aptean Food & Beverage ERP Whitepaper: Traceability Checklist for Fresh Produce Businesses
Traceability Checklist for Fresh Produce Businesses
Key steps to satisfy GS1 requirements
Traceability continues to be a hot topic in the food and beverage industry, and that’s certainly apparent in the fresh produce sector. As a competitor in this demanding market, your business needs to make sure everything you grow is accounted for and trackable.
That, of course, means dedicating resources to these efforts—time, effort and investments in the necessary technology. You’ve got to be able to act quickly in the case of an audit and show that you’re following the proper protocols, and even more critically, you must be able to react right away in food safety emergencies.
The most widely recognized and accepted set of traceability standards was established by international nonprofit GS1. They are designed to prioritize safety and visibility throughout supply chains, and they encompass Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP), British Retail Consortium (BRC) and International Featured Standards (IFS).
It’s important to note that adhering to GS1 standards is the minimum your business should be doing in terms of traceability efforts, as these guidelines facilitate “one step forward, one step back” traceability, not end-to-end. Also, it’s crucial that you are familiar with and prepare your business to comply with your government’s traceability regulations (see sidebars), as the ramifications of not doing so can be severe.
This whitepaper will provide you with a convenient checklist of to-do items to assure that you’re doing all that’s necessary to meet GS1 standards. Before you jump in, be sure you understand the following acronyms:
› Global Location Number (GLN) is a 13-digit number that identifies a location’s electronic address. By acting as a unique and unambiguous designation for individual establishments along the supply chain, it facilitates the exchange of information between trading partners.
› Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) is comprised of a unique company prefix and a unique item reference number, plus a check digit and all applicable GS1 Application Identifiers. The company prefix is issued by GS1, while the item reference number is assigned by the party responsible for creating the GTIN (likely the business). They can be 8, 12, 13 or 14 digits, depending on region and type of good. Furthermore, they can be encoded in GS1-128 barcodes.
› Serial Shipping Container Codes (SSCC) are 18-digit numbers used to identify logistics units. They can also be encoded in barcodes—generally GS1-128—or RFID tags to facilitate data capture. They’re frequently used for ecommerce transactions.
Lastly, note that the following items apply to all fresh produce businesses that grow, pack (or repack) and ship produce. Per GS1 traceability requirements, businesses are required to track the source of all production inputs by using GTINs, as they are recognized globally as a method of identifying items and function as a common “language” for identifying items, their components and related data.
Company Identification
1 Has a GLN been assigned to your company?
2 Have you shared this number with suppliers and customers?
These can be obtained from any GS1 Member Organization. Each is unique, identifying a specific business establishment.
If you don’t have an enterprise resource planning (ERP) or other transactional system that will automatically share your GLN with trading partners, you’ll need to do so manually to ensure that all parties involved can identify where your business fits into the supply chain.
Production and Inputs
3 Are you capturing the necessary information for all of your inputs?
4 Are you assigning GTINs to each of your traded products?
5 Are you recording all this information in your system of record?
This includes everything that goes into your product, down to the packaging.
Each item needs a unique GTIN.
Ideally, you’d capture all this information in an industryspecific ERP to establish a “single source of truth” for your traceability records.
Shipping and Logistics
6 Are you assigning internal batch/lot numbers to your products?
7 Are you assigning unique GTINs to your packages, pallets and crates?
8 Are you assigning Serial Shipping Container Codes (SSCC) to your logistics units?
9 Are you applying best practices when labeling products and logistic units?
This is a common practice for identifying specific groups of products made in a production run, and it facilitates the tracking of production date and time, which can then be captured in the GTIN with GS1 Application Identifiers.
These are separate and distinct from item-level GTINs.
Once you’ve used all SSCC numbers from those available, they can be re-issued, but only after a year has passed since they were last used.
This information should be easy to read for both you and your customers, and they should include GS1-128 barcodes with GTINs encoded in them, as well as your
10
Inbound Records, Assets and Logistics
Are you recording inbound shipment information?
11 Are you recording inbound product information?
12
13
Are you recording inbound logistics unit information?
Are you storing this information in an easy-to-access cloud system?
This should include the bill of lading number; the shipper’s GLN and “ship from” address; the recipient’s GLN and “ship to” address; the date of shipping; and the date of receipt.
This should include the GTIN; related traceability information; batch/lot number; quantity and unit of measure; the sender’s GLN and “ship from” address; and the date of receipt.
This should include the logistic unit identification (SSCC); the shipper’s GLN and “ship from” address; the recipient’s GLN and “ship to” address; and the date of receipt.
Again, this would ideally be an ERP built for fresh produce businesses, like Aptean Food & Beverage ERP
Outbound Records, Assets and Logistics
14 Are you sharing your outbound shipment information?
15 Are you sharing your outbound product information?
16 Are you sharing your outbound logistical unit information?
17 Are you storing this information in an easy-to-access cloud system?
This should include the bill of lading number; the shipper’s GLN and “ship from” address; the recipient’s GLN and “ship to” address; the date of shipping; and the date of shipment.
This should include the GTIN; related traceability information; batch/lot number; the sender’s GLN and “ship from” address; the recipient’s GLN and “ship to” address; and the date of shipment.
This should include the SSCC; the shipper’s GLN and “ship from” address; the recipient’s GLN and “ship to” address; and the date of shipment.
Using an ERP for this purpose not only provides your organization with an accurate digital record of outbound shipments—it also saves you time in updating inventory and financial records, as shipments are automatically accounted for across all parts of the system.
Traceability Regulations in the U.S.
The first legislation passed and implemented in the U.S. that addressed food traceability was the Bioterrorism Act of 2002, which established the “one step forward, one step backward” standard for tracking materials and finished goods. With the passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011 (FSMA), the government put the responsibility of establishing a system for rapid tracing of products on food and beverage manufacturers, increasing requirements so as to mitigate the risk of foodborne illness outbreaks.
In 2020, the FDA published the blueprint for the New Era for Smarter Food Safety, which encourages the use of purpose-built technology to facilitate end-to-end traceability. Most recently, the implementation of the Food Traceability Final Rule —which supplements Section 204(d) of FSMA—established a list of 16 foods that represent elevated food safety risks and required tracking of their associated Key Data Elements (KDEs) and Critical Tracking Points (CTPs).
Traceability Regulations in the EU
The European Food Safety Authority—an agency of the European Union—implemented the General Food Law Regulation in 2002, and Regulation (EC) No. 178/2002 of that document set the first traceability standards for food and beverage businesses. The Factsheet on Traceability published in 2007, as well as the Key Obligations of Food and Feed Business Operators leaflet published in 2016, have since provided guidance on how to put best practices in place.
The most recent development in EU food traceability law is the Regulation on Deforestation Free Products, set to go into effect at the end of 2024. It requires food and beverage businesses dealing in palm oil, cattle, soy, coffee, cocoa and their derived products to conduct due diligence to confirm that the materials they use (and transform into products that are put on the market) come from land that wasn’t deforested after December 31, 2020.
Traceability Regulations in the UK
Following Brexit, food traceability regulations in the United Kingdom have retained many elements of the EU’s General Food Law Regulation but diverged in a few ways. Great Britain, Wales and Scotland now fall under the sole provision of the Food Standards Agency (FSA), while Northern Ireland’s food and beverage industry is still subject to EU food traceability laws.
The FSA’s quick reference guide specifies that food business operators must maintain traceability information in their transactions with suppliers and customers, a model that is essential the same as “one step forward, one step backward” tracking. The guide also outlines key steps in implementing a food traceability system, as well as the process of issuing withdrawals and recalls.
Get the Technology To Tackle Traceability
While this checklist and the requirements laid out in it may seem like a tall order, purpose-built software exists to help you conquer the challenge. We’ve called out ERP systems—specifically those made for fresh produce businesses—as ideal solutions for maintaining traceability, but we realize you may still have questions about how these systems facilitate traceability, and what else makes them worth the investment.
For starters, there are the lot and sublot management tools of fresh produce ERP software, which provide item-level visibility for your raw materials and products. Industry-specific solutions also have SSCC and license plating tools for labeling and identification, as well as barcode scanner integration for automatic, paperless capture of traceability data.
That’s not all, though—advanced fresh produce ERPs, like Aptean Food & Beverage ERP, also offer nonconformance management, inspection status features and robust quality control functionalities to support your traceability efforts.
Our software can jumpstart a withdrawal or recall should your business experience a food safety emergency, and it also comes with the grower management, compliance document management and flexible pricing controls that companies like yours needs.
Better still, when you choose an Aptean solution, you can tap into the power of new AI capabilities that save time, and you can enjoy the enhanced cybersecurity, improved scalability and broad accessibility of a cloud platform on the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. And to top it off, we’re committed to acting as a trusted partner for each of our customers, so you’re backed by the best support and services of any provider.
Are You Ready to Learn More?
To explore how Aptean Food & Beverage ERP can help your fresh produce business establish seamless end-to-end traceability, contact us today or request a personalized demo.
About Aptean
Aptean is one of the world’s leading providers of industry-specific software. Our enterprise resource planning and supply chain solutions are uniquely designed to meet the needs of specialized manufacturers and distributors, while our compliance solutions serve specific markets such as finance and life sciences. With both cloud and on-premise deployment options, Aptean’s products, services and unmatched expertise help businesses of all sizes, across many industries, to scale and succeed.
