Meat Slaughter and Processing Plants’ Traceability Levels
Evidence From Iowa
Practitioner’s Abstract: In the United States (U.S.), there is no uniform traceability
regulation across food sector. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) implemented one-
step back and one-step forward traceability over the industries under its jurisdiction.
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees meat, poultry and egg
production, requires some record keeping as part of food safety regulation. Particularly,
a two-part-system has developed; live animal traceability and meat traceability with
slaughter and processing plants in between. This paper studies the question of whether
(and if so how) meat plants’ traceability levels vary with respect to the following factors;
product specific (credence versus experience and search attributes, branded versus
commodity meat, being exporter), organizational (spot market versus contracting), food
safety related, and plant specific (a quality assurance system in place, number of sources,
size, capital-labor ratio, etc.).
Key Words: traceability, food safety, quality assurances, animal ID, RFID.
Introduction
The incidences of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and possible introduction of
foot and mouth disease (FMD) and other contagious diseases in livestock, the
bioterrorism threat, recent high profile food scares and recalls due to Escherichia coli
0157 (E. Coli) and Salmonella increased interest in the concept of traceability in the
United States (U.S.) . The basic idea of traceability is to create and maintain an
“information trail” that follows to a certain extent the path taken by a given physical
product in its entire production process. At the incident of food safety failure, it assists
the response capability by identifying, measuring, and containing the problem, which
makes rapid and effective action possible, which in turn may reduce the resulting hazard.
Traceability is basically a proactive approach to food safety and quality management as it
requires pre-incident investment.
There is no a commonly accepted and one-type-fits-all definition for traceability. The
International Standards Organization of standards (ISO 9001: 2000) defines traceability
as “the ability to trace the history, application, or location of an entity by means of
recorded identifications”. Golan, Krissoff, and Kuchler (2004) find this definition quite
broad and suggest the following one “record keeping systems that are designed to track
the flow of product or product attributes through the production or supply chain”.
According to Smyth and Phillips (2002), supply chain literature sees traceability as
“information system necessary to provide history of products and services from origin to
the point of sale”. Mennecke, et al. (2006) defines traceability as “the ability to retrieve
the history, treatment, and location of the animal that a cut of meat comes from, through a
recordkeeping and audit system or registered identification program”. Dickinson and
Bailey (2002) adopt “ability to track the inputs used to make food products backward to
their source at different levels of the marketing chain”. The official definition of
traceability in European Union (E.U.) is “the ability to trace and follow a food, feed,