The F&B industry faces increasing demands for transparency, sustainability, security and ethical sourcing, making effective traceability systems more important than ever. However, many companies struggle with the challenge of different digital systems being unable to communicate with each other.
The Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Global Food Traceability Center (GFTC) in Chicago, US, has launched its Traceability Driver as a “cost-effective bridge” between systems to address this digital divide. The open-source tool allows data to be shared seamlessly across systems, such as for seafood imports, which often face criticism over “inadequate” traceability.
The tool automatically converts data into standardized formats that can be further shared interoperably. It was initially developed in response to increasing pressure on the seafood industry to improve traceability. The IFT says the tool can be installed locally, giving companies full control over their data.
GFTC is a technical advisor to the US FDA on the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), leading pilots and industry partnerships to inform regulatory approaches. The Center is a co-convenor of the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability (GDST) and has led the creation and ongoing development of the “first global standard for interoperable seafood traceability”.
food items first IFT spoke to Blake Harris, Managing Director of GFTC, to find out how the tool is helping companies overcome barriers to digital food traceability, and how traceability goals are expanding beyond food safety to support environmental performance and increase consumer confidence in product claims.
What is the current state of traceability adoption in the global F&B sector, and where are the most significant gaps?
Harris: Traceability has been part of the F&B industry for decades, but we are in the midst of a major transformation – from tracking products within individual facilities to enabling end-to-end, digital and interoperable traceability across entire supply chains. This means being able to track a product and its inputs from origin to final delivery. This change requires digital systems that can collect and exchange data across organizations. This is being driven by increasing regulatory requirements and market expectations around climate, labor and responsible sourcing, all of which are becoming increasingly embedded in purchasing decisions.
The biggest difference today is moving from analog or paper-based recordkeeping to digital systems and achieving interoperability between existing digital systems. Even when companies digitize their data, it does not mean that their systems can easily communicate with the data used by their suppliers or customers, limiting the usefulness of that data. Historically, the solution was to either require all suppliers to use the same mandatory system – an expensive and impractical approach – or to build a one-time integration, which is costly and time-consuming.
Using existing data standards, Traceability Driver replaces those independent custom integrations with a scalable, affordable bridge between systems. This approach allows suppliers to use the systems of their choice while being able to share data seamlessly with their customers. However, to fully leverage such tools, regulatory and industry traceability requirements must be based on event-based frameworks and common data standards to guide consistent data collection and sharing.
The Traceability Driver embeds knowledge of data standards within an open-source tool, reducing time spent on research and interpretation, Harris says.
How do you see traceability driving change in how food manufacturers and suppliers handle global data standardization and compliance?
Harris: In the supply chain, companies use in-house IT systems or commercially available software solutions to manage product tracking. The people responsible for maintaining these systems are primarily the ones who must understand how the data collected in these software systems relates to data standards and how that information can be shared with other systems.
Traceability Driver supports these roles by embedding knowledge of data standards directly within an open-source tool. This means that employees can spend less time researching and interpreting pages of standards documentation to understand how it applies to their software.
In practice, this can lead to greater efficiency gains – our case study [agritech company] Coltiva showed a 60% reduction in the estimated time to pass the GDST capability test. This automated assessment verifies whether a software system has implemented the requirements of the GDST traceability standard and is therefore interoperable with any other systems that have passed.
With respect to digital transformation, how does the traceability driver lower the barrier to entry for smaller companies?
Harris: The Traceability Driver was created to support digital-to-digital interoperability, so for smaller companies that already collect data digitally, it helps take the next step – making that data usable beyond their own systems.
There is a tremendous amount of creative and innovative work happening in the tech sector to support specific use cases in the F&B industry. Most of these solutions are designed with a focus on usability and meeting the needs of your direct customers. However, they don’t always consider how their technology or the data it collects will interact with broader systems used throughout the supply chain.
The Traceability Driver helps bridge that gap by translating the data collected by those systems into the requirements of global data standards and providing a prebuilt API to further share that data. This reduces the system-wide cost of achieving digital interoperability and the individual costs small companies face when meeting traceability and compliance expectations.
You have worked with the Indonesian government on national seafood traceability. What lessons from that experience shaped the design of this new tool?
Harris: As original co-convenor of the World Wildlife Fund, we have supported the implementation of the GDST standard from the beginning – a role that has become increasingly important as the pressures on the seafood industry around traceability intensify year on year. As in other food systems, the need for scalable resources to support best practice traceability implementation has increased significantly.
Earlier this year, the Indonesian government announced that it would align its national traceability system with GDST, which increased the scale. It became clear that we needed new, creative ways to efficiently support large numbers of implementers. That realization, along with many other initiatives in the seafood sector, directly shaped the design of the Traceability Driver as an open-source, scalable resource that can help digital systems become more easily interoperable.
The response since launch has been incredible. Within two weeks of launching the case study, nearly 100 individuals have downloaded the Traceability Driver from our repository, which is proof that there is a real appetite across the industry for practical, accessible tools that make digital traceability easier to implement.
Regulations such as EUDR rely on traceability to verify sustainability, legality and ethical sourcing requirements.
Apart from seafood, which sectors could benefit most from the adoption of this tool?
Harris: Most, if not all, major food and agriculture sectors are facing increasing pressure to improve traceability from regulators and risk management priorities. Some are already taking steps on the path paved by the seafood industry through GDST towards establishing a digital interoperable traceability framework. For example, initiatives such as the Global Traceability Framework for Beef and Leather are aligning stakeholders around a shared vision for data standards.
These frameworks enable scalable, open-source tools like traceability drivers to deliver real impact. When these frameworks are in place, technology adoption is relatively low lift relative to other commodities, making it possible for sectors such as dairy, beef, or produce to benefit as quickly as seafood.
That said, this tool is not a silver bullet – it’s one piece of the puzzle to make digital interoperability practical and accessible. We are exploring the concepts of additional tools to strengthen interoperability across systems and help companies still relying on paper or analog methods connect to the digital traceability ecosystem.
What role do you expect traceability to play in the future beyond food safety?
Harris: We are already seeing traceability being used far beyond food safety. Regulations such as the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and the Seafood Import Monitoring Program all rely on traceability to verify sustainability, legality and ethical sourcing requirements.
You don’t do traceability for the sake of traceability – it’s always in service of the use case. While food safety has traditionally been the driver, traceability is now being leveraged to support a wide range of goals, from confirming environmental performance and human rights compliance to strengthening consumer confidence in product claims. As more use cases emerge through industry-led initiatives or regulatory demands, digital interoperability across systems will be essential to make traceability data meaningful and useful for multiple purposes.