With more and more cases coming to light, it won’t be long before consumers start to demand full traceability of all meat products, to provide them with the reassurance that what they’re buying hasn’t come from a cloned animal.
In fact, many local farmers are now starting to use traceability records and ethical history as a sales and promotions tool, enabling them to identify the exact farm and herd name of each of the animal products they’re selling.
Traceability is an essential requirement for producer and retailer. By linking up with an ERP system, suppliers can effectively manage and trace the blood stock of all their products back through the family lines, and the origins of the animal end-to-end.
Alongside recent high-profile health scares such as CJD or ‘Mad Cow Disease’, this is a necessary requirement. If a company fails to comply, then there’s a high chance that they could become de-listed by the multiple and, in turn, cease to be in business!
Without an ERP system, traceability must be carried out manually which, put plainly, is nothing short of an administrative nightmare, and for a volume-based business, impossible to cope with. Many companies often find it difficult to prove traceability, particularly when they’re audited. With an automated system, it’s far easier to maintain accurate records and also perform audits remotely, so rather than on-site inspections, suppliers are able to send electronic ERP records together with physical document images to the auditors, which can all be batched up against each work order that’s placed.
Ethically sound products sell, and if retailers can catch on to the high selling factor that traceability adds to a product, they may take more notice of the benefits that an automated ERP system can provide.
Andrew Brown is MD of the process manufacturing systems division of Solarsoft
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