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
