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| You Say Tomatoes, I Say Jalapenos |
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Supply chain risk management -- Why the food industry needs a strong trace solution
Rob Wiersma
Industry Strategy Director, Food and Beverage
Lawson Software
Several weeks back I offered some thoughts on the emerging food crisis of the time, which was a U.S.-based salmonella outbreak. The prime suspect in the case back then: potentially tainted tomatoes. It became immediately evident that the food industry, federal regulators and other authorities were scrambling to identify the root cause of the latest salmonella outbreak. National and local media outlets were all over the story and creating a wave of near panic that affected restaurants, fast food joints, grocers and anyone else selling or serving tomatoes.
During a food contamination case, especially one of this magnitude, all eyes eventually go to the food source – producers and distributors. It’s understandable that retailers and restaurants want to wash their hands of the problem. It’s easy for them – they can just pull the tomatoes off the menu or off the shelf. They immediately look like guardians for their customers and shift the focus to the supply chain.
But with each passing food contamination case, the stakes seem to get higher. The years of hard work that go into creating a food production or distribution business and establishing a trusted brand name can be wiped out at the mere mention of salmonella, E.coli or other illnesses that cause misery, and in some cases, death. You don’t want your business, which is known almost exclusively through its brand identity and reputation, to be mentioned in the headlines trumpeting the latest food borne illness. Such a headline can destroy that business overnight.
Okay, so let’s go back to the tomatoes. Weeks have passed after I penned my commentary about tainted tomatoes. During that time, nobody could truly identify the contamination source. Fast food places gradually began to put tomatoes back on the menus, grocers stocked tomatoes on the shelves and people slowly stopped saying “Oh, I heard on the news that if you eat tomatoes you’ll get sick.” The storm appeared to have passed. The world of fresh produce was getting back to normal.
Not so fast, Mr. or Ms. food producer or distributor. You know those jalapenos that you have in your warehouse? Well, it turns out they just might be the culprit. So the “great tomato scare of July” is quickly morphing into the “the not-so-hot jalapeno scare of August.” The food industry, federal agencies and everyone else involved in the search for the source of contamination may have missed the boat altogether and wound up blaming millions of innocent tomatoes. And now the jalapeno business is on the hot seat. Consumers will now be saying, “Oh, I heard on the news that that if you eat jalapenos you’ll get sick.”
Regardless, the damage is already done. According to recent media reports, the tomato industry estimates it’s been hit with about $100 million in losses due to the salmonella outbreak. And it appears to be affecting farmers’ decisions whether to plant tomatoes in the upcoming season, which can lead to even higher prices for consumers.
Lesson learned once again: A powerful traceability tool is not a luxury item. It’s a necessity. It definitely should not be viewed as a mere insurance policy against a possible food contamination scare. A powerful traceability solution should be core to your overall strategy. It can help you clear your name during the crisis and keep your products in the marketplace (when your competitor’s products are being pulled from the shelves).
Possibly more important, though, is that beyond helping you manage a food contamination scare, a powerful traceability tool can be central to your daily quality management initiatives. Traceability can certainly make it easier and more effective to pinpoint problems in your supply chain, but it can also help you manage food quality by identifying anomalies during production. Traceability can actually help you catch quality issues BEFORE the product ships (imagine that!). Much better to catch a few pallets of less-than-perfect produce before it gets on the truck than to try to contain a bigger problem down the road.
Rest assured, Lawson has a solution that can help on both fronts – traceability during the unthinkable crisis and traceability as a core element of your overall quality management initiatives.
Being realistic, I fully expect that I’ll be offering my thoughts on another food crisis sooner than we all hope. It’s painfully clear that the need for traceability will continue to make headlines. Yesterday it was tomatoes. Today it’s jalapenos. Tomorrow it will be (insert produce item here). Sadly, another unsuspecting industry will get hit hard with the next food scare. Now go out and enjoy a potato. They seem okay (for now).
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