Issue 3 2019

58 analysis & control
Placing trust & transparency at the heart
of complex food supply chains
Public trust in food today is all too often being challenged by food scares and animal welfare
concerns. Trust is fragile predominantly due to a lack of transparency and authenticity, with
consumers increasingly demanding full traceability of a product’s identity, origin, and history.
“Consumers today are not only
demanding more transparency
from businesses; they are also
setting higher expectations
for how businesses should
demonstrate it. Consumers are
no longer satisfied with general
statements asserting products
are sustainably produced or
responsibly made. Now, they want
to see the real data backing it up.
Where exactly do these products
come from, and how exactly were
they made.”
Source: 2019 Edelman Trust
Barometer –Food and Beverage
“Increasing supply chain visibility
always strengthens consumer
trust… In their paper, researchers
[from MIT Sloan School of
Management]noted than in a
recent survey 75% of respondents
considered transparency helpful
in strengthening trust between
businesses and consumers. But
according to another poll, 81% of
1,700 companies surveyed did
not have full visibility into their
supply chains, with 54% having no
visibility at all.”
Source: Chartered Institute of
Procurement and Supply, blog
by Andrew Allen, 29thAugust
2019
“Shoppers are increasingly
turning to food to help manage
health and well-being. They seek
to understand what is in their
food, who made it and how it was
produced…No less than 66% of
shoppers look for “better-for-me”
items and around three in 10
look for products that are better
for the planet, farmers, workers
or animals. Together, these
powerful numbers show that 80%
of consumers are looking to the
industry to provide options for
better-for alternatives.”
Source: ‘Power Of Meat 2019’
by the Food Marketing Institute
and Foundation for Meat &
Poultry Research & Education
DNA TraceBack ® is a scientific
solution that accurately and
precisely traces animal-derived
protein products, including
beef, pork, and poultry as well
as seafood, from fork to farm.
This cutting-edge traceability
technology is unrivalled in
promoting trust and protecting
provenance within challenging
food business environments.
The Challenge
Italy’s premium pork products
such as Salami, Parma and
San Daniele Ham are world
famous but are not immune to
the potential reputational and
financial damage due to the
trust deficit between brands
and consumers. While product
tracking through auditing
processes is standard practice in
the food industry, the meat sector
typically comprises complex food
supply chains with numerous
stages involved in production and
processing.
Take the case of Beef and
Pork where the animal carcass
does not remain intact but
is disassembled into smaller
components that are often mixed
with other proteins to make the
final output sold in retail or food
service settings. Consequently,
an animal’s information, namely
its identity and region or breed
of origin, is easily lost. Traditional
paper-based audit systems and
more recent blockchain digital
ledgers have difficulty tracing and
tracking complex protein products
through this complexity back to
the source farm animal.
Leading food companies
recognise that delivering a
robust system to ensure reliable
traceability along the entire
supply chain is key and deploy
DNA TraceBack ® from IdentiGEN
as their preferred solution. To help
safeguard Italy’s valuable food
industry IdentiGEN partnered
with a leading Italian retailer to
examine the potential of DNA
based traceability to address the
complex challenge of premium
pork products.
Tracing Italian pork products
from fork to farm with accuracy
& precision
The solution
In collaboration with a major
Italian pork-producing farm and
two large-scale transformers for
Italian ham and salami products,
IdentiGEN conducted a fivemonth
pilot study on selected
premium branded products in late
2018. Employing IdentiGEN’s
proprietary DNA TraceBack ®
technology, the objectives were
to demonstrate the ability of DNA
TraceBack ® to accurately and
precisely trace production pig
meat to a defined sow population
www.foodmagazine.eu.com issue three 2019