Traceability Standards Can Help Improve Food Safety

The supply chains that industries rely on to carry products around the world are undergoing a seismic transformation. Upheavals triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and its seemingly never-ending repercussions continue to impede the flow of goods in every sector, including the global food supply. Shoppers are no longer surprised to discover that their favorite grocery products are out of stock; even restaurants are reporting availability issues that affect their menu offerings on a daily basis.

Unpredictable supply timelines can cripple the provision of goods across all industries, impacting production, sales, and customer satisfaction. The food industry faces the additional challenges related to maintaining food safety through the distribution of perishable items. Grocery stores and restaurants manage their supply chains and inventory with meticulous attention to temperature control requirements and expiration dates to ensure that food is safe to eat when it is sold. Delayed shipments can compromise freshness and elevate the risk of spoilage or contamination, posing a threat to public health.

Meanwhile a massive, technology-based evolution of traceability systems connecting suppliers and retailers across the entire supply chain is underway. This system hinges on effective teamwork among trading partners to facilitate real-time data exchanges so that all stakeholders can quickly pinpoint the location and disposition of a particular product at any time throughout its journey to point of sale.

In order for this system to work, all parties in the supply chain must be engaged in a collaborative approach based on standardized data that will allow clear and timely information exchanges. System compatibility and data standards are essential to enable full visibility and traceability so that buyers will know which products are available or out of stock, where they are in the distribution chain, and when delivery can be expected, for starters.

Sharing pertinent supply chain information helps all trading partners anticipate, plan, and optimize their ordering, delivery, and inventory management, as long as the data is exchanged in a standardized format that all parties can understand. This is the premise behind the adoption of data standards to enable clear and accurate exchange of information.

The momentum to incorporate technology for supply chain improvement also coincides with and supports two major initiatives driving the food industry’s adoption and implementation of data standards: FDA’s proposal to heighten traceability requirements for certain foods and a movement toward labeling products with two-dimensional (2D) barcodes that enable access to unprecedented levels of product information and transparency.

FDA Heightens Traceability Requirements for High-Risk Foods

Data show that most foodborne illness outbreaks in the U.S. are caused by certain food categories that are particularly susceptible to pathogenic contamination. The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) directed FDA to develop a standardized mechanism to identify these foods that pose a higher risk to consumers and to monitor these specific products with extra vigilance: to know where they are at all times, enabling fast, accurate removal from the supply chain if needed, as in the event of a recall or market withdrawal.

That’s why FDA is now imposing extra, mandatory traceability requirements for producers of foods they have designated as “high risk” under Section 204 of FSMA. The agency’s new Food Traceability Rule, with a proposed compliance date in January 2026 for all producers, will require that all supply chain partners that harvest, produce, handle, and acquire foods on FDA’s Food Traceability List (FTL) must keep more detailed records to drive greater transparency, helping to prevent or better mitigate outbreaks of foodborne illnesses.

The rule specifically requires those who “manufacture, process, pack, or hold” foods on the FTL to record certain key data elements (KDEs) associated with different critical tracking events (CTEs) in the supply chain. CTEs include growing, receiving, creating, transforming, and shipping; different KDEs will be required for each event, depending on the commodity being tracked.