Food Traceability
Ability to trace food products forward and backward in supply chain
Food Traceability is the ability to track and follow a food product through all stages of production, processing, and distribution. It is a foundational requirement of all major food safety standards and EU/US regulations.
Traceability has two directions: - **Backward (one step back)**: from any point, identify the immediate supplier of incoming materials. - **Forward (one step forward)**: from any point, identify the immediate customer of outgoing products.
EU Regulation 178/2002 mandates "one step back, one step forward" traceability for all food businesses. BRCGS, IFS, FSSC, and other major standards add specific requirements: lot identification, batch recording, mass balance reconciliation, and recall simulations.
For Egyptian food exporters, traceability becomes more challenging when sourcing from many small farmers (typical for fresh produce). Best practices: - Unique lot codes on all incoming raw materials. - Production batch codes linking raw materials to finished goods. - Pallet labels with batch codes. - Container manifests linking outgoing shipments to production batches. - Mock recall exercises minimum once per year, demonstrating traceability within 4 hours.
FoodGate Audit verifies traceability during facility audits and end-to-end inspections, including conducting mass balance and mock recall exercises.