The San Francisco Chronicle reports on a new food traceability system called HarvestMark, which has been developed in anticipation of federal regulations that could require some sort of tracking system for the nation’s foods.
In San Joaquin County, for example, workers put stickers on watermelons, with each melon having its own 16-figure code, which establishes when and where the melon was harvested. The Chronicle writes, “The new tracing system is one example of how the private sector has responded to recent food-safety scares, such as the 2006 E. coli outbreak involving spinach. In advance of any legal mandate, a few growers have started putting HarvestMark codes on products like plastic-packaged grapes and strawberries, as well as watermelons.”
Not only is this information available to people within industry and government, but also to consumers, who can use the code to identify on the Internet where the fresh produce they are eating has been harvested.
In San Joaquin County, for example, workers put stickers on watermelons, with each melon having its own 16-figure code, which establishes when and where the melon was harvested. The Chronicle writes, “The new tracing system is one example of how the private sector has responded to recent food-safety scares, such as the 2006 E. coli outbreak involving spinach. In advance of any legal mandate, a few growers have started putting HarvestMark codes on products like plastic-packaged grapes and strawberries, as well as watermelons.”
Not only is this information available to people within industry and government, but also to consumers, who can use the code to identify on the Internet where the fresh produce they are eating has been harvested.
- KC's View:
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So many people and companies try to find reasons and excuses that this kind of traceability cannot be achieved. It is good to see that some are taking the opposite approach – looking for solutions and trying to get ahead of the wave.
This is similar to other approaches that have been pointed out here on MNB, which as the use of code numbers by Terra Creta to allow people to see everything they could possibly want to know about the olive oil they are using, including seeing the olive groves from which the product emanated.
This is where things are going. If you don't get ahead of the wave, you risk getting drowned in the flood of companies that do achieve this level of transparency.
