Food traceability systems and risk management.
Anica-Popa, Ionut-Florin
Abstract: Due to actions of governments, public and private
organizations having the scope diminishing the population concerns
regarding food quality, the food safety and security has been started to
represent basic conditions for international trade. In order to fulfill
those requirements, all actors across the food supply chain must
implement a system capable to track and trace any particular unit
located within the food supply chain. This paper will present the main
aspects regarding food traceability standards, food traceability systems
and the risk management. Conclusions and future directions of the
research are discussed.
Key words: food safety, information systems, traceability systems,
risk management
1. INTRODUCTION
In the last period, the business environment is characterized by
chaos and uncertainly because the period of economic boom is followed by
the major crises, the life cycle of offered products and services became
shorter and the end-customers are more interested by qualitative
aspects, related to safety and security, for acquired goods and
services. In this context, the importance of food safety and security
became one of the most relevant issues regarding food and foodstuff, and
organizations must enhance their capabilities for food risk management,
even if the business environment do not offer excellent condition for
the implementation of policies for risk management (Frame, 2003). One of
the most used methods for risk management in food safety and security
area is represented by traceability systems. Moreover, the European
concept "from farm to fork" determined the companies and
governments to cooperate in order to provide a full picture of all
stages from the food supply chain of a foodstuff, until it reach the end
consumer.
2. TRACEABILITY SYSTEMS
Companies can adopt a proactive approach in order to manage food
safety and security by building and implementing traceability systems.
The existing of food traceability systems at the organizational level
will determine the increasing of the trust of consumers in provided food
and foodstuff which can be assimilated with a competitive advantage and
this represents one of the most important strategic objectives for any
organization (Anica-Popa, 2010).
In the national or international regulations or standards exists
many definitions regarding the concept of food traceability:
* The Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 of the European Parliament and of
the Council states that the traceability represents "the ability to
trace and follow a food, feed, food-producing animal or substance
intended to be, or expected to be incorporated into a food or feed,
through all stages of production, processing and distribution".
* GlobalGAP defines the traceability as "the ability to
retrace the history, use or location of a product (that is the origin of
materials and parts, the history of processes applied to the product, or
the distribution and placement of the product after delivery) by the
means of recorded identification".
* ISO 22005:2007 considers that the traceability represents
"ability to follow the movement of a feed or food through specified
stage(s) of production, processing and distribution".
* Codex Alimentarius considers that the traceability represents
"the ability to follow the movement of a food through specified
stage(s) of production, processing and distribution".
* GS1 standards states that the traceability represents
"ability to track forward the movement through specified stage(s)
of the extended supply chain and trace backward the history, application
or location of that which is under consideration".
* The Romanian Law 150/2004 regarding food and feed safety defines
traceability as "the ability to identify and trace over all stages
of production, processing and distribution food, feed or food-producing
animal that will be used for food or substance production which will be
incorporate or can be incorporated in a food or feed".
Taking into consideration all these definitions we can conclude
that the traceability represents the ability to trace back a food to its
origins and furthermore, to trace back all the components of that food
to origins (using data and information stored in traceability systems).
The supporting organizations value chain represents from the
beginning one of the most important objective of the information system
(IS), therefore the major part of the organizations use the information
and communications technology for more than operational and management
support (Hong, 2002). The IS collects, processes, stores, analyzes and
provides data, information and knowledge used in the business processes
in order to fulfill the proposed objectives of the organizations,
therefore we can consider that information system can be assimilated
with the organization's core.
In order to increase organizational performances, it is necessary
that organizational information systems to provide into an adequate form
accurate, complete and timely information that must support the decision
making process.
There are more methods, techniques and indicators for evaluating
information systems, but the most used indicators are effectiveness and
efficiency, which were described with the following two phrases
(Drucker, 1966): "effectiveness is doing the right thing" and
"efficiency is doing the thing right". If we are using a more
formal definition for these indicators, the effectiveness can be defined
as the achievement degree of proposed objectives and efficiency
represents the usage degree of resources allocated for obtaining the
results.
In order to obtain food traceability it is necessary to be
implemented traceability systems which gather and process data in order
to provide complete, accurate and on time information regarding
foodstuff from the food supply chain (Regattieri et al., 2007). A
traceability system has three main objectives: (a) to identify the foods
that can be dangerous for human consumption in order to recall those
products from the sale; (b) to trace back the product on the supply
chain food in order to identify where the problem appear and which are
the causes that generated the problem in order to prevent new
apparitions of the problem; (c) to store a complete and full log of
history and locations for foodstuff on the entire food supply chain
(Dabbene & Gay, 2011). In order to fulfill all presented objectives
it is necessary that each actor's IS from food supply chain to
communicate and to exchange data between them.
3. RISK MANAGEMENT
Risks are present in business and in all activities of
organizations, the generator sources could be internal or external, the
risk management being strongly connected with the quantity and quality
of known information: if the quantity and quality of known information
is growing, the chances to manage the risk in an efficient manner, in
order to avoid to put in danger the organization's objectives, is
growing. Because every organization has more departments (purchases,
manufacturing, sales, accounting, research and development, human
resources etc.) and each of them are being under some specific sets of
risks, it is necessary, in order to reduce or eliminate these risks, to
follow strict procedures inside organization, to create check points for
identifying possible events that can generate problems to organization
(Turner & Wunnicke, 2003).
Risk management represents a systematic process for reducing and,
if it is possible, eliminating the probabilities of appearance of losses
(Turner and Wunnicke, 2003).
Frame (2003) identified five stages in the process of risk
management: (i) building a risk management plan; (ii) identifying the
risk; (iii) analyzing the risk impact from quantitative and qualitative
point of view; (iv) designing and implementing new strategies for risk
management; (v) monitoring and controlling the risk.
Building a risk management plan
The preparations for risk management must be based on the premise
that the risk management represents an action that must be planned in
very small details, if it is possible in the smallest details, trying to
cover the major part of possible situations.
Identifying the risk
The internal and external environment must be monitored constantly
and permanent in order to identify the risks that can influence in a
negative manner the organization's activities and objectives,
consequently being recommended to elaborate an information system that
allow the identification of the significant part from the set of
possible risks.
Analyzing the risk impact from quantitative and qualitative point
of view
After the system for risks identification was designed and built it
is necessary to determine the consequences generated by every risk from
quantitative and qualitative point of view.
Designing and implementing new strategies for risk management
Taking into consideration that in previous stages were identified
the possible risks and the consequences that are generated by these
risks, in this moment can be designing and implementing new strategies
to manage in an efficient manner these risks (to diminish the negative
effects generated by these risks, to reduce as much as possible the
probability of appearance for risks etc.).
Monitoring and controlling the risk
The permanent monitoring of organizational risk space must be a
permanent activity in order to identify all possible events that can
generate negative effects and to try to control these disturbing events.
These stages, with minor changes, can be applied for risk
management in the case of any food traceability information system
implemented at the organizational level. The approach from the
perspective of the inter-organizational information system, which is
"a network-based IS that extends beyond traditional enterprise
boundaries" (Hong, 2002), generate important updates of the stages
because the process of risk management must be applied over more than
one information systems that are inter-connected and that influence each
other.
4. CONCLUSION
The process of risk management related to food traceability
information systems represents a challenge for scientists and
practitioners. Moreover, governments and national or international
organizations that build standards and regulations are very preoccupied by this process because has a direct implication over the quality of
provided agri-food products and the food safety.
Starting from general architecture of food supply chain which
includes the following main links: farms, processors, distributors and
retailers, future directions of the research will be focused to identify
the critical points for each link and how can be locally managed risks
related to food safety and security. After that, the next step will be
represented by the research of modalities of how can be inter-connected
information systems belonging to different organizations from every link
into a national information system in order to improve the process of
risk management for food supply chain.
5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was co-financed from the European Social Fund through
Sectoral Operational Programme Human Resources Development 2007-2013,
project number POSDRU /89/1.5/S/59184 "Performance and excellence
in postdoctoral research in Romanian economics science domain" and
by the Accounting and Management Information System Research Center from
the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies.
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