Have a wonderful extended weekend with your family and loved ones. Our blog will return on Monday July 7th.

In a USA TODAY article by Elizabeth Weise titled FDA adds up to 100 labs to help trace salmonella outbreak, David Acheson the FDA?s associate commissioner for foods posed a question as to whether pushing the food industry to move to computerized record keeping might speed investigations in the future. He went on to say ?In a digital age should we still be using paper and pencil to try to figure things out??

In the same article. Jean Halloran of Consumers Union called on congress to mandate traceability of fruits and vegetables back to their source.

We agree with both David Acheson and Jean Halloran. We would go one step further and suggest that all products have this level of traceability regardless if they are consumables or not.

Our company SafeSourcing Inc. www.safesourcing.com was launched on 5/12/2008 and is focused on safety and traceability in the retail supply chain. We can easily tell you how many farms there are in Mexico that process fruits, or how many meat processing plants there are in Nebraska in an instant with contact information. Our daily blog has a lot to do with safety in procurement and three blogs recently have dealt with the salmonella outbreak.

Part of what SafeSourcing does when providing data to retailers relative to their current suppliers or alternate sources of supply is to provide traceability content to the original source. While some of that work today requires paper, pencil and phone related work; once information is obtained it is included in our database for future reference. Think of it as a traceability RFI tool on demand for retailers. Our database presently contains over 187,000 North American suppliers and 26 targeted safety and eco focused certifications.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with one footstep. We look forward to your comments.

Ron

In the nation section of the Tuesday edition of USA TODAY is an article titled CDC widens its salmonella investigation. As you might recall, my blog post I say Tomato, you say Tomahto on June 10th discussed the fact that at the time there were 145 salmonella cases with 23 hospitalizations resulting from the current tomato scare. According to today’s article there are now 851 cases. That’s an astonishing 487% increase in less than a month.

In the same section of the paper under the wire reports section by Steve Marshall. There was a nice picture of a hippopotamus celebrating its 50th birthday in the Kiev Zoo. Evidently this is very old for a hippo as the normal lifespan is 40-50 years. The hippo’s present was a fruit basket. I could make out the bananas, but could not see if there were any tomatoes.

That’s unfortunate, because hippos might like tomatoes. As it turns out according to the above mentioned article, the recent salmonella outbreaks in the US may not have even been caused by tomatoes at all. And now there is news that the CDC is broadening the investigation. According to the article if in fact another food is found to be the culprit after the produce industry lost hundreds of millions with the tomato recall, the publics trust in the government’s ability to track food borne illnesses will be severely damaged.

I know I’m still not eating any tomatoes, and I love tomatoes. Is it the farmers fault, the CDC’s fault, the FDA’s fault? That’s a hard question to answer. What is true is that we have to do a better job of providing safe quality foods to retailers to sell to their consumers. There needs to be some type of central repository of safe data that allows tracking of products to their source more quickly. Our families, friends, pets and even the hippos will thank us.

I look forward to your comments

Ron

In the nation section of the Tuesday edition of USA TODAY is an article titled CDC widens its salmonella investigation. As you might recall, my blog post I say Tomato, you say Tomahto on June 10th discussed the fact that at the time there were 145 salmonella cases with 23 hospitalizations resulting from the current tomato scare. According to today?s article there are now 851 cases. That?s an astonishing 487% increase in less than a month.

In the same section of the paper under the wire reports section by Steve Marshall. There was a nice picture of a hippopotamus celebrating its 50th birthday in the Kiev Zoo. Evidently this is very old for a hippo as the normal lifespan is 40-50 years. The hippo?s present was a fruit basket. I could make out the bananas, but could not see if there were any tomatoes.

That?s unfortunate, because hippos might like tomatoes. As it turns out according to the above mentioned article, the recent salmonella outbreaks in the US may not have even been caused by tomatoes at all. And now there is news that the CDC is broadening the investigation. According to the article if in fact another food is found to be the culprit after the produce industry lost hundreds of millions with the tomato recall, the publics trust in the government?s ability to track food borne illnesses will be severely damaged.

I know I?m still not eating any tomatoes, and I love tomatoes. Is it the farmers fault, the CDC?s fault, the FDA?s fault? That?s a hard question to answer. What is true is that we have to do a better job of providing safe quality foods to retailers to sell to their consumers. There needs to be some type of central repository of safe data that allows tracking of products to their source more quickly. Our families, friends, pets and even the hippos will thank us.

I look forward to your comments

Ron

When we think about safety and eco standards in the supply chain, I honestly believe that retailers say quietly to themselves; how are we supposed to monitor this with everything else we have to deal with in procuring products?

I have written on this subject before, and as a TQM ands Six Sigma advocate, believe in the statement that you can not manage something that you do not measure.

The issue becomes more complex when you consider that data is required from your organization relative to the historical performance of existing suppliers, data from the supplier as to their own assessment of their historical performance and finally external data that neither may have at their finger tips.

When we talk about safety, the question that retailers need to ask suppliers is pretty simple. What certifications do you carry relative to food safety such as Safe Quality Foods (SQF), Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), American Humane Certified and many more? Another area to question should be regarding USDA and FDA inspection history.

Although Green Initiatives fall into the social consciousness area of a company, there are a variety of questions that can be asked in this area as well such as Green Seal, Eco-logo and Green Star certifications and participations.

It may be easier for retailers to rely on their e-procurement providers for this data if the provider has it included in their supplier database. Pre-populated e-procurement templates can act as a form of scorecard for existing suppliers and potential news sources of supply. This is actually a type of automated RFI process which can save retailers a lot of work and time when trying to find additional sources of supply or when trying to drive cost down with existing suppliers. These data may also help to protect retailers from harmful litigation when products end up not being as safe as promised.

Can your e-procurement provider provide these types of data on demand as a normal byproduct of your standard e-procurement process at no additional cost?

I look forward to your comments.

Ron

When we think about safety and eco standards in the supply chain, I honestly believe that retailers say quietly to themselves; how are we supposed to monitor this with everything else we have to deal with in procuring products?

I have written on this subject before, and as a TQM ands Six Sigma advocate, believe in the statement that you can not manage something that you do not measure.

The issue becomes more complex when you consider that data is required from your organization relative to the historical performance of existing suppliers, data from the supplier as to their own assessment of their historical performance and finally external data that neither may have at their finger tips.

When we talk about safety, the question that retailers need to ask suppliers is pretty simple. What certifications do you carry relative to food safety such as Safe Quality Foods (SQF), Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), American Humane Certified and many more? Another area to question should be regarding USDA and FDA inspection history.

Although Green Initiatives fall into the social consciousness area of a company, there are a variety of questions that can be asked in this area as well such as Green Seal, Eco-logo and Green Star certifications and participations.

It may be easier for retailers to rely on their e-procurement providers for this data if the provider has it included in their supplier database. Pre-populated e-procurement templates can act as a form of scorecard for existing suppliers and potential news sources of supply. This is actually a type of automated RFI process which can save retailers a lot of work and time when trying to find additional sources of supply or when trying to drive cost down with existing suppliers. These data may also help to protect retailers from harmful litigation when products end up not being as safe as promised.

Can your e-procurement provider provide these types of data on demand as a normal byproduct of your standard e-procurement process at no additional cost?

I look forward to your comments.

Ron