Advantages and Disadvantages of Traceability System

Everything have their own pros and cons right? So does ICT usage in food safety. Long short story, there must be a lot of the advantages compared to the disadvantages right? So now, we are going to explore the world of food safety based on ICT through its advantages and disadvantages. Let’s go!

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So first of all, we are going to take a look at ICT advantages as the good always comes first*I think*.

The advantages:

Traceability system as the main hero of food safety. 

(Picture credits to http://trishwylie.blogspot.my/2012/07/what-makes-hero.html)

1. As a proof

(Picture credit to https://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkas:Kebun.jpg)

Traceability is very important especially in developing and under developed countries. Why? Well firstly, the countries must concerned in protecting their cottage industries. Whether mangoes from India or seafood from Indonesia, every country wants to protect their unique products. As we may know from some food safety outbreaks over the last ten years, a food safety incident in one product gives influence toward the entire sector. So here comes traceability as the lifesaver as it allows these countries and supplier to confidently prove that their foods are safe and not related from any ongoing food safety incident.

2. Food police

Secondly, traceability helps remove illegal activities within the supply chain. For example, fishing with an overdue license or overfishing without a license, traceability enables the supplier to give customers the confidence that what they are buying is legal, safe and fairly traded. On the other hand, the traceability that is getting better will contribute to facilitate international trade. This is done by taking the food that is domestically produced to markets outside the region and creating a demand for it.

3. Long term warranty

And last but not least, there is a significant grow movement around the world on sourcing and buying locally. As more consumers demand local, non-genetically modified, sustainable, and organic foods, traceability is the only tool that can be used to prove to the consumers when they are purchasing and consuming a product that makes these claims.

Now, let’s move on to the disadvantages:

1.  Time consuming.

Obviously, the negative effect of traceability is it takes extra time and effort to keep up with the tracing of requirements during the project. It also increases the effort of maintenance, especially in a progressing system that needs numerous changes for future releases. However, the effort to perform traceability is not so negative if the information captured is used in the future in order to save time and effort.

(Credits to http://qsadvisor.com/2014/08/guide-change-management/)

2.      Management changing.

An article in 1998 had mentioned that "Establishing and maintaining requirements traceability is a politically sensitive and expensive endeavor. Developers are not really known and realize for their love of documentation. Traceability can be a side effect of their daily productive work rather than stately additional bureaucracy”.  Therefore, when the traceability process is established, a certain change management needs to be employed, especially with regard to developers, who need to be convinced that the minor daily effort of requirements tracing will have payoffs in the future.

(Credit to http://d4nations.com/webpubl/articles/import---what-is-the-meaning-of-the-word-import.html)

3.      Import problems.

Traceability also might be difficult to encounter especially in a developing country. This is because multi-ingredient foods may include materials from a variety of food chains and countries, so the developing country may have to rely on the traceability systems of other countries up to the point of import.

4.  Checklist updates.

The traceability system requires food supply chain owner to be capable of identifying and go through records maintained by the company, the immediate supplier, and customer of an identified food material. Although even the smallest of food businesses typically use some form of an accounting system, the normal processes and records related to purchasing, receiving and shipping products are sometimes insufficient to fulfill the traceability system requirement or may be unaccompanied by effective internal traceability or maintenance of the onward genuine of the material identifier.

And there you have it! The ups and downs of the traceability system. In life, there must be good things and bad things so does food traceability system.

Thanks for spending your time reading and do hit the comment section below. Do leave questions if there is any curiosity bubbling from inside.