October 6, 2021

More than Just a Label

Tapping into data down to the individual ingredient

By Kelly Smith

In the era of technology-enabled food traceability, a single label scan tells the highly detailed, nuanced, and precise story of every ingredient involved in that food’s production. When backed by an adequately deployed traceability solution, this story of food that’s unlocked by a simple scan has the power to protect consumers and empower businesses.

With the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) signed into law in 2011 and the FDA’s continued commitment to maintaining a standardized Food Traceability List (FTL), the need for a technology-enabled approach to food traceability has never been greater. As the FDA highlights in its recently published “New Era of Smarter Food Safety” blueprint, “digital technologies offer the potential to help us predict and prevent food safety problems and better detect and respond to problems when they do occur.”

The sanctity and strength of a technology-enabled approach to food and beverage traceability have been put to the test over the last several years, too. Since 2017, the FDA has issued more than 1,140 Food & Beverage recalls, market withdrawals, and safety alerts.

Let’s explore how a label can tell the entire supply chain story for a given food ingredient and how having access to that story can empower your business to scan, identify, and leverage product data to enhance food & beverage operations.

It Starts with a Scan

With proper food traceability technology in place, every label contains the details of the item’s supply chain journey and the ingredients involved in its production. Those details can be homed in on to an exacting degree, too, as businesses are able to identify the source and journey of goods with a single scan.

Ashton Potter’s ProLinc® is an advanced product security and traceability solution that enables complete product serialization for every item across the global supply chain. With that product serialization comes the ability for ProLinc® to serve up a highly detailed genealogy—down to the individual ingredient—through a single product scan. Because ProLinc® is a sophisticated, SaaS-based solution, it’s capable of delivering these food source insights at the high velocities required for the global supply chain. What results is a scalable, always-ready database of food and ingredient detail that ensures your supply chain is standardized and safe.

Immediate Ingredient Identification

With a complete product and ingredient genealogy in place and instantly accessible, food and beverage organizations have what they need to immediately identify problematic issues in their supply line. For instance, if a recall is issued for an early-stage ingredient, a simple scan will identify whether or not a product includes the impacted ingredient and needs to be acted upon. As the recall effort moves forward, the same scanning process will ensure the authenticity and quality of products into the future.

With ProLinc®, businesses have both access to a database that provides both serialized identities, down to the individual subcomponent, and a highly scalable infrastructure that’s capable of handling billions of records. With the depth and specificity of ingredient detail afforded by ProLinc®, businesses can save significant time and money by scaling recall response down to specific ingredients. Combining product and ingredient clarity with rapid response makes it possible for organizations to act on recalls before their products even make it out into field. That sort of precision and speed are only possible when product and ingredient data are maintained and ensured to be secure, up-to-date, and accurate.

Data Gap Mitigation

If a recall for a specific ingredient is issued or production and supply issues arise, far too many organizations face a common problem: latent data. Many organizations update their supply line and product genealogies in spread-out data dumps, creating gaps between these update efforts. Those gaps inherently cause inconsistencies between what’s true now and what was true previously, and it’s in those inconsistencies where potential trouble lies when it comes to hazardous product recalls or supply line breakdowns.

Because ProLinc® was built with the high-velocity supply chain in mind, data is gathered, aggregated, and analyzed at near-instantaneous processing speeds. The ProLinc® solution ensures your supply chain database matches the speed of global business, and its near-real-time design virtually erases the problematic data gaps that come from timed updates.

With up-to-date data in hand, ProLinc® empowers Food and Beverage manufacturers to easily generate analyses on KPIs like operating margin, compliance reporting, throughput, ingredient usage, food safety, and more.

Secure Food & Beverage Products Through Complete Traceability and Insights

From initial supply through production to end of life, Ashton Potter’s ProLinc® creates a complete, accurate genealogy for every product in your supply chain at every point in the product lifecycle. Operating at the high-velocity pace of the global food and beverage business is challenging even before recalls and safety alerts enter the equation—and ProLinc® enables businesses to expertly navigate complex food & beverage manufacturing processes with confidence.

Speak with an expert today to learn more about how a scalable, high-velocity database can enable stronger product safety.