Traceability gets a boost with the launch of a secure network

Monday, October 3, 2011

The OnTrace Verified Network enables members to share information on tracking agricultural products. At the same time, the federal-provincial Traceability Foundation Initiative is offering $21.5 million in funding to support agri-food traceability

by MARY BAXTER

Traceability, the ability to follow food products through all stages of the Ontario agri-food chain, took two big steps forward over the summer.

In June, OnTrace Agri-food Traceability, the non-profit organization that maintains a provincial agricultural premises registry for animal health emergencies, announced that it had launched a secure network, OnTrace Verified Network. For a fee, members can share information for tracking.

Brian Sterling, OnTrace's CEO, touts the network as a solution not only for large businesses to share traceability information along the production and marketing chain but also small and midsize players. The concept is similar to a virtual private network, which is established over the Internet to connect users while protecting the privacy of the information exchanged with authentication requirements and encryption. Only, in the OnTrace model, users are connected to the network, which is where the information exchange takes place. The banks'"Interac is actually the system on which this concept was conceived," Sterling says.

Artisan Foods Limited, a new Ontario niche beef value-chain initiative, is exploring sharing information with its buyers through the OnTrace Verified Network (OVN).

"Instead of us communicating with 40 or 50 different processors, we can just go on and dump our file into our OVN," and provide instructions as to who can access it, says Greg Nolan, Artisan's vice-president of finance. In turn, instead of having to call Artisan if there's a question about the processing, such as how many days an animal is aged, buyers "could go into the OVN and just get that information."

Nolan calls the concept "tremendous," but notes there's a lot of work on OnTrace's side to get large food services trained to use it.

Hanover-based New Life Mills, which manufactures livestock feed and produces eggs, chickens and turkeys, is also planning to use the network, but its initial goal is to speed up response time in connection with biosecurity or disease problems. "With the OVN, we can quickly map an affected area and then reroute our trucks to mitigate potential risks to our customers' businesses as well as our own," states Ryan Kreager, the company's manager for corporate risk and compliance, in a June news release. Kreager did not respond to Better Farming's requests for an interview.

The launch of OnTrace's network is one of two major developments in traceability that have taken place this year. The other was the July launch of the Traceability Foundation Initiative. The $21.5 million federal and provincial program will grant up to 75 per cent in cost-share funding to sector organizations and value chains to support the development of agri-food traceability information sharing networks. The application period closed in September.

While money might be available and there's now at least one organization with the technical expertise to facilitate it, for many commodities and companies total traceability remains elusive and the focus is instead on improving connections at specific points along the production chain.

In July, Ontario Pork was exploring the possibility of applying for funding from the Traceability Foundation to expand a pilot project to equip truckers with electronic equipment to collect information about hog movements. Extending the program across Ontario "would be one of the most logical next steps and we haven't figured out what the scope of that is yet," says Tim Metzger, Ontario Pork's national program co-ordinator.

Egg Farmers of Ontario also plans to apply to the Traceability Foundation Initiative to help acquire equipment at grading stations to make possible the tracking of individual eggs back to the producer. The idea is to stamp each egg with a code to identify the farm of origin and a best-before date, explains Harry Pelissero, Egg Farmers' general manager. Information that appears on the carton already identifies the time the eggs were graded and a group of farms the eggs would have come from. "By putting a code on each egg, you're able to take it down even further than that if necessary."

Gwen Zellen, Chicken Farmers of Ontario's vice-president for food quality, operations and risk management, notes that her industry has already developed a high degree of traceability, partly in response to the needs of maintaining a supply-managed system.

But a lot of the tracking is on paper, she notes. Introducing more electronic transfer of information would improve efficiency and minimize errors.

Another traceability challenge is determining common terminology and measurement standards across the production chain, Zellen adds. She points out that, currently, hatcheries, producers and processors have different ways of identifying sub-premises – different barns or floors of a large operation. "We agree we should all call that the same thing, so that's what we're working on."

Zellen says that the standard they are developing is close to one developed by a federal industry government advisory committee which is spearheading the national agriculture and food traceability system. It may also work for other commodities that feature operations with multiple locations. If so, the approach may be something OnTrace can eventually embrace as an added feature of the agricultural premises registry. "Those are all things we need to work through yet," she says.

Back at OnTrace, Sterling suggests that achieving interconnection with all partners at once may be unrealistic. "We have always felt initially that there's probably only going to be a small number you're going to want to deal with. And so that's the way you start."

One of the greatest challenges facing agriculture in achieving full traceability is trust, he says.  "The technology is not the issue. The issue is, are people going to trust one another?" BF