WINNIPEG, Manitoba -- A pilot project in Manitoba has shown that is possible to track food backward from the store to the farm -- something that could be invaluable in the event of another food-borne disease outbreak.
The project was a joint effort between the province, computer company IBM and 16 farmers, processing plants, truckers and retail stores.
Dr. Wayne Lees, Manitoba's chief veterinary officer, says expanding on the success of the pilot project would require a move away from a paper trail toward a computerized one.
Currently, a cow can go through dozens of hands on its way to the slaughterhouse, butcher and grocery store, and everyone along the way may have a different system of record-keeping.
It can be even more complicated for other foods such as vegetables, which are not individually tagged.
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From paper to computer
Officials are aiming to make the new tracking system precise enough to follow a piece of broccoli, a carrot or other item between the store where it is sold and the farm where it originated.
"The problem is, a lot of the information in the food supply chain currently is being kept, unfortunately, (with) paper and pen, and therefore not accessible in an emergency and also subject to error and loss," says Susan Wilkinson of IBM.
For the new system to work, everyone in the food supply chain would have to agree to store and share key information by computer.
Federal or provincial food agencies responding to a disease outbreak could then instantly access the data, determine what other food products might be tainted, and quickly have them pulled off store shelves.
Such a system would be valuable in a case such as the listeriosis outbreak traced to a Maple Leaf Foods processing plant in Toronto. The outbreak was linked to 20 deaths across Canada last summer.
The planned tracing system not only would track foods back to plants, but also quickly would reveal the various producers, truckers and others who handled the food.
However, getting farmers, truckers, storekeepers and other to agree on a common system may take time.
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"I liken traceability to building the national railway system," Lees says. "It had to go across all kinds of different terrain and it had to go across all kinds of different jurisdictions . . . but with collective will, you can do it."
