Recently, iTradeNetwork debuted a breakthrough to its traceability solution suite: Protein Trace. In our recent webinar, Traceability Without Labels: A Breakthrough for Protein Product Recalls, Sr. Solutions Director Sara Metzger shared why protein producers and retailers need a better way to trace chicken, beef, and pork products, especially in the event of a food recall. A better way that doesn't require labels.

Protein Traceability: The Challenges

Tracing proteins has been a challenge in our industry for many reasons. Here are the top three.

Incomplete origination data

During a recall the product origination is critical. But, for protein, it’s complicated. 

“Yes, we need to know where those products came from,” said Sara Metzger. “We want to know where the proteins were raised, if they were treated humanely and had free-range, but the place we are most likely to see contamination is during processing.”

Obtaining tracing data on your processing lines (where most contamination occurs) isn’t easy especially considering many protein products combine ingredients. For instance, chicken nuggets also have breading added to them. So it’s not just about tracking where the protein came from, but also the other ingredients that were added to it. That means more inputs need to be aggregated so if there is a recall, every ingredient can be traced back to the source.

Lack of common trusted data

The lack of common, trusted data is another obstacle. Currently, many businesses collect data through various manual sources, so there is no universal systematic approach. When you have a lack of common data from different sources, responding to food safety events promptly can be nearly impossible.

Coordination challenges

Coordination challenges during a recall become more common as our protein supply chains become more complex. Without end-to-end visibility, you lose critical time and information that’s needed to protect your brand and keep your customers safe.

“Often there’s a trade-off between speed and agility & precision and certainty,” said Metzger. To act quickly we need a broader approach without trading these factors. We need speed, agility, precision, and certainty. All of these factors are essential, which makes the protein traceability issues more complicated to solve. Until now.

Introducing Protein Trace

The good news is we have a solution to help overcome protein traceability challenges. Protein Trace  is now part of our suite of solutions.

“Our Protein Trace solution presents a fundamental shift in how our industry thinks about traceability,” said Metzger. “Historically, it’s been thought that the only way to trace accurately is through a label. But that doesn’t work for everyone. So our team looked at the data needed to solve the problem and the data we had available and found the solution.”

How exactly does this innovative Protein Trace solution work if no labels are required? Watch our webinar on-demand here to see exactly how it can work for you.