I had a chance to visit a workshop on 360º traceability organised by the EU project TRACEBACK on November 13th. Traceback is an innovative EU project which tries to get the electronic traceability bit just right, using modern IT concepts and an integration of the periphery. They have demonstrated in two supply chains (tomato and milk) that their system is working nicely and have industry advocates such as PERMALAT who see real value in the system that has been deployed to them.

Still: the main discussion on the workshop was not about TRACEBACK and webservices, but about how to sell traceability to a hesitant food industry. It became clear once more that there is a dire need for cost benefit analysis that really is relevant, i.e. produces numbers that the industry can relate to.

It is clear that there are a number of business cases where traceability as an enabling technology makes a whole lot of sense. Food safety and enabling recalls clearly is not one of them. We have tried to sell that angle and the industry failed to buy it. Private industry dealing in traceability systems are still suffering from a resulting tainted brand" name.