The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has launched a new educational video series on the food safety benefits that come with the use of tech-enabled traceability by food businesses. The first video in the series focuses on supply chain technology and builds on key themes from the 2021 FDA New Era of Smarter Food Safety Low- or No-Cost Tech-Enabled Traceability Challenge.

Episode 1 of the series features five participating companies demonstrating various approaches to low- or no-cost traceability technologies within diverse parts of the food supply chain. The video showcases how the food industry can help create a more digital, efficient, and safe food system that will benefit both consumers and food producers. The roundtable participants discuss opportunities for firms to voluntarily adopt tracing technologies, harmonize tracing activities, and ways to incentivize the development and implementation of scalable and cost-effective traceability hardware, software, or data analytics platforms.  

The video is a resource for food producers, technology providers, and other stakeholders interested in advancing food traceability concepts and supporting efforts to achieve end-to-end traceability throughout the food safety system, at low- or no-cost to the end user, as outlined in the New Era of Smarter Food Safety blueprint.

Participating companies in Episode 1 include:

• Morpheus Network, which provides agrifood producers, exporters, and retailers with a digital footprint for end-to-end shipment history that supports regulatory compliance and helps optimize supply chain operations
• Bamboo Rose, which provides a globally accessible and secure environment for organizations and their partners to share information related to product development and supply chain
• Nira, which develops and maintains software solutions that enable food supply chain partners and regulators to discover and access product information from authoritative sources
• iFoodDS, which offers a comprehensive food supply chain platform for food safety, traceability, and quality management
• Varcode, which creates a temperature-based traceability safety network from consumer back to the point of origination to better facilitate recall procedures.

The video includes companies that participated in the Low- or No-Cost Tech-Enabled Traceability Challenge and that expressed interest in participating in the video series. FDA does not endorse any technology, company, or solution, and the views and opinions of the video series participants represent those of the speakers and should not be considered to represent advice or guidance on behalf of FDA.