Sara Bratager is a Food Traceability and Food Safety Scientist at the Global Food Traceability Center (GFTC) at the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT). She enjoys applying years of traceability and food safety management experience in manufacturing toward GFTC's efforts to engage food system stakeholders in their traceability journey through applied research, capacity building, advocacy, system design, and implementation. Ms. Bratager and the GFTC team continue to support industry actors in their FSMA 204 compliance journey.
Of all the key features of FDA's Traceability Final Rule, the Traceability Lot Code (TLC) stands out for its criticality and understated complexity. This crucial code serves as a breadcrumb trail, highlighting every step a product takes through the supply chain.To meet the TLC requirements, industry actors will need to make significant modifications to current lot coding practices.
Robust food traceability systems serve several roles in advancing foodsafety and sustainability.Traceability systems are inherently collaborative and require allmembersofa product supply chain to collect, store, and share data.
The IFT FIRST event offered several key takeaways impacting food safety, from topics and issues surrounding supply chain disruption and innovation to data standards and contaminants.
