Traceability requirements for information systems in the agro-food sector

Food safety and quality are keys to companies' business survival and great effort and resources are devoted to them. The food production chain, from the farms and feed mills to the finished products leaving the processing plants, is subject to independent examination and auditing either under the sector's own assurance schemes under official regulatory inspection and testing programmes with published results. For farmers and the agro-food industry, this means new market opportunities – and continual change. Food safety is an on-going challenge, demanding the best control systems and day-to-day vigilance on farms, in processing plants and throughout the distribution system. In order to enable consumers to make the right choice when buying their food and in order to build up markets for quality products, labelling has to provide all relevant information about the production process. Besides complete information about its ingredients, food labels should bear information about its place of origin and the way in which it was produced

EDI - XML Standards and Technologies in the Agri-Food Industry

Due to globalisation, the new technological developments and the complexity of food supply processes, the European food sector is increasingly becoming more complex. The consumers’ trust in food, triggered and affected by a number of food crises, is low. Today, consumers increasingly expect safe and high quality food and demand information about the origin of their food. Also, the economic health of the food industry can be greatly affected by food crises; therefore, efficient and effective mechanisms are required to assist the food industry in tracking and tracing products along the food chain. In this paper, we discuss the criteria for an efficient and effective traceability system from an IT perspective (mainly data exchange) and we identify key requirements for ICT enabled traceability

Quality control and product tracing in ERP systems

Food safety and quality are keys to companies' business survival and great efforts and resources are devoted to them. This is an on-going challenge, demanding the best control systems and day- to-day vigilance on farms, in processing plants and throughout the distribution system. The product quality of the Hungarian meet industry meets the high level international standards, because the Hungarian meet industry is an export oriented sector. However, the application of computers and information systems still haven’t got enough emphasis in the food sector, although the majority of companies use ERP systems. IT budgets of Hungarian companies are smaller than of the ones in industrialized countries. They spend 0.49% of their return from sales on IT operation and development. We find different rates among Hungarian owners and foreign owners. The Hungarian ones spend less (0.36%), but foreigners spend twice this amount (0.61) on informatics. Quality control is conducted at several stages of the production flow. The most important targets are basic materials coming from partners, purchased and processed products and foods. We have to be able to identify and determine what ingredients there are in the end-products and what the production and distribution processes were. Sometimes this refers to a process backwards that we have to conduct when we discover a mistake in the production flow or in the quality of the end-product. Back- tracing is a six stage flow in the system. Our paper and lecture describes how the ERP system is built-in food tracing functions and experiences in Hungary

Printed Electronics in Product Identification and Tracing

Food and livestock traceability and tracking are now very hot topics because of severe threats to health and the need to comply with stringent new legislation. The traceability of products and components has received critical attention over the past few years. The requirements from the individual segments of the food industry may vary. The solutions of these problems are the introduction of modern quality assurance systems, traceability and identification of products

Effects of Wood Ash on the Chemical Properties of Soil and Crop Vitality in Small Plot Experiments

W ood - burning power plants and heating plants produce a great amount of wood ash as a by - product of the combustion process . In 2009 we launched an experiment in which we examined the composition of ash, the nutri ent suppl ying capacity of soil mixed with ash, and the availability of its constituents . In the spring of 2010 , we conducted small plot experiments using wood ash applications equivalent to 0; 1; 2.5; 5 and 10 t of wood ash/ha , on s lightly acidic clay loam soil using white mustard and rye grass as the test plants . T he pH value of the soil rose in a statistically verifiable way as a result of the ash treatments . After the application of ash , the P 2 O 5 and K 2 O - content of the soil rose significantly ; t he treatments also i ncreased the magnesium and sulphur content of the arable soil as well as the level of Zinc among the microelements. However, n one of the wood ash applications caused verifiable changes in the number of shoots, in the green mass , or in the height of test plants. The \ud increased nutrient supply of the soil through the treatments was not reflected i n the nutrient content of the plants during the first year

Application of modern traceability systems and data storage technologies by Hungarian meat companies.

In the beginning of the new century the matter of food safety plays an accentuated role through the whole food supply chain. Important issues in this topic are the risk of bioterrorism, impurities in the food-chain and the ascendant customer needs. The solutions of these problems are the introduction of modern quality assurance and traceability systems. The traceability of products and components has received critical attention over the past few years. The purpose of these traceability systems stems from both the economic and food security value of physically tracking batch loads of food and food attributes from the harvest field to any point in the supply chain. In this paper we inspect of spreading of modern quality assurance and traceability systems and we examine the use of information systems and data storage technologies by a survey, which was published for Hungarian meat companies