Growers see traceability as essential to food safety

New technology and other advances are bringing food safety and traceability to the forefront among grower-shippers like never before.

“With new technology comes better traceability from seed to shelf,” said Chelsea Consalo, executive vice president at Consalo Family Farms, Egg Harbor City, N.J.

“Our farms use the PET Tiger payroll and field management system to track all the ‘ins-and-outs’ of our farming operations,” she said.

All conventional and organic crops grown in the company’s fields have bar codes assigned to the boxes or totes used to harvest, Consalo said.

“With those codes, we can identify the location of harvest and even the employee doing the harvesting,” she said.

Consalo Family Farms also uses Highland Hub, a digital compliance system that allows the company to complete sanitation checks, field audits, pre-op checks and more on cell phones and tablets.

“Becoming fully electronic has made everything immensely more manageable for our entire operation,” Consalo said.

Miami-based Alpine Fresh Inc. has focused on providing safe, quality products to consumers for the more than 30 years the company has been in business, said Maggy Garcia, director of food safety and quality. Today, that same focus has expanded to a global market.

“With every new project, we strive to follow food safety, traceability and stringent product quality standards,” Garcia said. “It is essential to use traceability systems that can trace products at every level of the supply chain, from the field to the consumer.”

This includes Produce Traceability Initiative case-level traceability that outlines lot, location, pack date, product description and other information for each item, she said.

Consalo of Consalo Family Farms would like to see more emphasis on traceability among grower-shippers.

“With shippers, traceability many times becomes diluted, and where the product comes from gets lost,” she said.

Consalo does not see traceability as an optional procedure.

“I think traceability should be a demand [for a shipper] as a member of the produce industry as we work to provide healthy and safe fruits and vegetables,” she said.

Alpine Fresh continues to emphasize two initiatives — a food safety culture and sustainability — during its growth process, Garcia said.

“A strong food safety culture ensures that upholding food safety standards is at the core of every decision or action by individuals in the organization,” she said. “Maintaining these processes can prevent recalls.”