"The PTI simply offers a voluntary solution to help industry achieve existing mandatory traceability requirements"

Interview with Julia Stewart, Public Relations Director of the Produce Marketing Association

New product tracing systems have been the subject of discussion in the United States this December. Traceability is already mandatory and since 2007 the supply chain has been working on a new Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI) to find voluntary solutions in order to help industry meet the existing requirements. In an interview with Brassicas Today, Julia Stewart, public relations director of the Produce Marketing Association, outlines the main points of the new PTI, which aims to assist the fresh produce sector in achieving chain-wide, electronic produce traceability by 2012.

Q. Could you explain to our readers what the new Produce Traceability Initiative is?
A. The Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI) is an industry-developed action plan for achieving chain-wide electronic product traceability by 2012. It involves identifying individual cases of produce using internationally recognised product identification standards called Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs), and then tracking each case’s GTIN, lot number and pack/harvest date as the case moves through the supply chain.
* GTINs are analogous to the UPC codes used to identify grocery, consumer packaged goods and other products for well over a decade.

Q. Who has been involved in the development of the new PTI?
A. Traceability is not a new area for the Produce Marketing Association (PMA), since we began collaborating with the Canadian Produce Marketing Association (CPMA) on data standardisation to facilitate traceability back in 2002. The PTI was formed by the PMA, CPMA and United Fresh Produce Association in 2007 and completed its work in 2008.

Q. What do you expect from the new PTI?
A. The PTI action plan is the result of unprecedented collaboration on the part of more than 50 companies from across the supply chain. The plan was unveiled in 2008, and identifies seven milestones, or steps, to achieving the PTI vision of chain-wide electronic traceability at the case level by 2012. By allowing companies to augment their existing internal traceability systems to achieve external traceability, it accomplishes that goal in ways that are efficient and cost-effective.

Q. Who and which products will be affected by the new Produce Traceability Initiative?
A. The PTI is a voluntary program; however, the vision is that by 2012 all produce sold in the United States will be compliant.

“The PTI simply offers a voluntary solution to help industry achieve existing mandatory traceability requirements”

Q. What is innovative about this guideline?
A. Everyone in the U.S. produce industry is required by the Bioterrorism Act of 2002 to trace product one step forward, and one step back. They have some kind of internal traceability system to help them do this, whether it is keeping paper records in a shoe box or a proprietary, confidential information technology solution. Now, however, we want to be able to track product across all those various and varied internal systems as it moves through the supply chain, so this is external, chain-wide traceability.
Traceability is already mandatory. The PTI simply offers a voluntary solution to help industry achieve existing mandatory requirements.

Q. What is the most important aspect of traceability?
A. After a series of high-profile food borne illness outbreaks in recent years involving fresh produce, our current one-step-forward, one-step-back capability is no longer sufficient in the eyes of key stakeholders, including the U.S. Congress, regulators and influential consumer groups. Despite our best food safety efforts, fresh produce is now considered a leading cause of food borne illnesses by the U.S. government, particularly leafy greens, melons and tomatoes.
The PTI is designed to enhance the industry’s current traceability capability by uniting the supply chain to provide standards for product tracking, including standardised electronic record keeping. Both steps will allow suspect product to be traced and removed from the marketplace more efficiently.

“It is important to assist the public health community in completing food borne illness investigations”

Q. Why is traceability so important for the fresh vegetables sector?
A. It is generally important to the produce industry for two reasons: firstly, to promote industry supply chain efficiencies, since other parts of the grocery store are standardized and have been able to electronically identify products for well over a decade; and secondly, to assist the public health community in completing food borne illness investigations and to remove suspect product from the marketplace.

Q. What information about traceability is currently available?
A. The PTI’s official website offers step-by-step information and tools for executing the PTI action plan at the company level, in addition to other related resources. Furthermore, it identifies staff at the three associations that sponsor the PTI who are available for consultation, as well as educational events specific to the PTI.

Q. The deadline for the Food Safety Working Group to present new traceability guidance has passed. Why has this been delayed? What problems are you encountering in implementing a new Produce Traceability Initiative?
A. You would need to ask the FDA why its promised guidance has been delayed.
We are generally pleased with how the industry’s implementation of the PTI is going. It should be remembered that it is still very early in the PTI’s timeline for implementation, and industry awareness has improved considerably. To date, we have focused our efforts on creating awareness and knowledge, through the website and the many educational events that the three associations have sponsored.

Q. What have you done to make the entire chain aware of the new PTI?
A. We have also been working to educate industry on the real-world costs, as well as the benefits of implementing PTI. How much it will cost a particular company to comply with the PTI depends upon the size of the company, and how technologically capable it already is. Companies who have already embraced technology such as bar coding face lower costs than those that haven’t. We’re also helping to minimise the costs by providing turnkey tools to help companies with implementation; the PTI has developed best practices for most of the milestones already.
We’re also encouraging industry members to look at compliance as an insurance policy that can reduce the negative impact that a food borne illness outbreak recall can have on an individual company, and an entire commodity market.

Q. What do industry leaders think about the initiative’s delay?
A. We’re not waiting on the FDA or the White House Food Safety Working Group to solve our industry’s issues, we are proactively, voluntarily solving them ourselves and have been since 2007.

Q. What was meant when the PMA, CPMA and United Fresh Produce Association declared: “We expect a federal proposal to support and not contradict the industry-led traceability effort”?
A. We don’t expect Congress or the FDA to mandate the PTI specifically, because legislation and regulation don’t ever get that specific. Instead, we can expect that they will define basic standards or identify basic criteria that must be met, and the “how” to meet them will be up to the marketplace. This said, we can reasonably anticipate what some of those standards or criteria they will define will be: globally accepted product identification standards and electronic record keeping, for example, both of which are already central to the PTI.

Q. What are the advantages and weaknesses of the Global Trade Identification Number?
A. GS1’s standards are internationally recognised, and have been time tested and proven around the world.

Q. What information does the PTI give to consumers? Does it help to improve consumption?
A. PTI’s usefulness is to the supply chain and the public health community. While it is not specifically a consumer initiative, ultimately it can help to restore consumer confidence in the safety of fresh produce, something that has been severely damaged in recent years.

Q. What is the future trend in traceability?
A. The future of traceability is electronic, chain-wide traceability using globally recognised product identification standards: it is the PTI.

For more information about the PTI, the action plan and its milestones, and for tools to help achieve each milestone, visit the PTI’s official website at www.producetraceability.org.

S&G Brassicas Today - January 2010