Canadians raise concern over traceability timeline

Published on 05/22/2009 04:05pm
By Tom Karst
thepacker.com

Even as many U.S. produce associations, retailers and grower shippers
have endorsed the Produce Traceability Initiative, Canadian retailers
and distributors have put up a stop sign.

They say won't endorse the PTI timeline but remain supportive of U.S.
implementation.

The Produce Traceability Initiative, seeking voluntary compliance for
standard, case-level traceability for the supply chain, is a joint
project launched in October 2007 by the Ottawa-based Canadian Produce
Marketing Association; Washington, D.C.-based United Fresh Produce
Association; and the Produce Marketing Association, Newark, Del.

A substantial number of grower-shippers in Canada who supply U.S.
retailers appear to be keeping pace with the initiative's deadlines so
far, said Jane Proctor, vice president of policy and issue management
for the CPMA.

The number of companies who have recently signed up for the GS1 prefix
number required to trace products through the supply chain is unclear,
she said, because many suppliers in Canada already have the prefixes to
supply produce with DataBar labels to Canadian retailer Loblaw, she
said.

Retail reservations

Foodservice and retail distributors in Canada are less sure about their
involvement.

"Canadian retailers feel they have acceptable traceability in place now
to meet the requirement of a recall," said Proctor.

However, Proctor said she believes Canadian receivers are eager to learn
from the "bleeding edge" of U.S. adoption of the traceability
initiative.

"(Canadian retailers) are looking to the U.S. implementation to help
them understand of how to implement it themselves when they are ready to
do so," she said.

Canadian retail and foodservice distributors support voluntary
traceability programs by produce and other industry sectors based on the
value to their customers, added Jackie Crichton, vice president of food
safety and labeling for the Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors,
Pakenham, Ontario.

She said the group favors the industry-developed Can-Trace standards as
the basis for product traceability in Canada. Those standards were
developed in 2004 and a second version of standards is currently under
development.

In evaluating the timeline for the Produce Traceability Initiative, one
Canadian retailer said his organization wasn't sure if it was feasible.

He said one of the biggest concerns is the time to reach and store
information on inbound and outbound cases, which were given target
completion dates of 2011 and 2012, respectively.

"The question was, how we operationalize it today based on the timelines
the committee came up with?" said Eric Biddiscombe, senior director of
planning for the produce business unit for supermarket chain Loblaw Cos.
Ltd., Brampton.

Biddiscombe said he sat in on the development of the timeline for the
Produce Traceability Initiative and continues to take part in an
initiative task force.

Under the GS1 system backed by the initiative, he said retailers would
receive pallets based on item numbers rather than lot codes. That would
slow down the process of handling of inbound and outbound pallets and
cases at distribution centers, he said.

"It adds operational complexity to the inbound receiving process as it
pertains to sorting by lot number and labeling," he said.

At the same time, costs figure to be added to outbound cases as scanning
will be required for each case under the PTI model.

"The watch out is that customers will pay for that," he said.

However, he said PTI does offer an enhanced traceability model that is
attractive. 

Costs and benefits

He said he was uncomfortable that there is a lack of a cost-benefit
analysis of the initiative.

"Here we are endorsing the way we are going to be doing business and
there isn't anything that has been formally done to show what the
payback is," he said.

Biddiscombe said the initiative appears to be looking for radio
frequency identification results without the benefit of that technology.
RFID technology would make the case-level labeling efficient allowing
radio identification of coding - but the technology is limited with some
commodities with high water content, such as iceberg lettuce.

Dan Vache, vice president of supply chain management for United Fresh,
said there is no industrywide estimate on the cost of the initiative.

He said there will be adjustments on the part of retailers and other
receivers as they gear up to scan inbound and outbound cases. However,
that is why, he said, those deadlines are the last ones. What's more,
Vache said retailers he visits with are determined to find efficiencies
as they adapt to the timeline and changes in how pull product.

Retailers who have to pull vast amount of products off the shelf because
of food recalls realize case level traceability will target recalls much
more precisely.

Another top concern is the complexity of the traceability system for
local growers, Biddiscombe said.

"It is the small local farmer we are concerned about," he said, noting
Loblaw uses about 400 local growers in its sourcing. "What we are asking
those folks to do with traceability tracking, they don't have the
technology or know-how to be able to do it."

Also, he said there are problems with case-level coding for items like
RPC cartons, bagged products and wooden crates.

For examples, a traceability label is supposed to appear on the front
and the side of a case, but bags, RPCs and wooden crates don't have good
options in that regard.

"There seemed to be a lot of unanswered questions around those pieces
that need to be answered," he said.