Why traceability in the food chain is important

The day I went to tour the Hemp Oil Canada plant at Ste. Agathe, MB, I washed with hemp soap in the morning and ate hemp hearts for breakfast as I do quite often. And it wasn’t for the sake of being able to tell my hosts I used your product this morning, but the fact I use it most mornings.
Aside from gaining some more knowledge of the hemp industry, I found intriguing the traceability system the company uses. For years the various farm sectors keep revisiting the whole aspect of traceability whether pork and beef on your barbecue, whatever product the farmer grows. Advances in technology, the size of the electronic tools, and record-keeping or traceability play a vital part in tracing that product right back to the farm where grown, raised or produced.
“We refer to it as our seed-to-shelf system. So as part of our farm operations, we’re responsible for growing and developing the pedigreed seed that we sell to the farmer. Now we enter into contractual arrangements where the farmer then sells his production back to us. We can trace product the farmer produces to the consumer’s shelf,” said Clarence Swaluk, director of farm operations. “So if you take a bag of hemp hearts, turn the bag over, there is a lot number beside the expiry date or the packaged date. And from that, we can tell you when it was produced in our facility, which of our team members were on the floor to package that product, which bin it arrived at in our facility, which seed cleaning plant it went through to get prepared to food-grade, and which farm contributed that product. And then by way of our contract, our grower’s show us the GPS coordinates of all the fields used to grow for us tracing the product right back to the exact field grown on. So that’s our seed-to-shelf, it goes right from the farm through our entire system. We have oversight on every step of the production along the way, at our facilities, manufacturing, and out to the consumer.”
Clarence said, “So we can tell you exactly where that product came from, we know the growers that work with us, and how it moves through the entire system.”
While visiting with Clarence and other employees on site, many memories returned of 1998-99, maybe the year 2000, when the initial excitement but poor handling caused farmers to sour on growing hemp. From burning combines and balers in the field to a total market collapse and overhyped industry. Things have changed dramatically to what is happening today from the tall plants grown for the fibre that didn’t have a market to growing hemp mostly for food including hemp seed, oil, protein, and even hemp flour.
“Well, if you’re talking about seeing some of those varieties back in 1998, the industry imported them from Russia, Ukraine, and some of other Eastern Bloc countries. Those regions of the world where they produce hemp, it’s primarily for fibre, and those varieties get very, very tall,” he said. “Oh yeah, they’re tough to harvest, and getting a combine through those early varieties was a nightmare. I still have farmers that come to me at the trade shows and say, I remember growing it in 1998 or ’99, and never again. Since then, our seed breeding programs have focused on bringing that variety down in size and having it much shorter. We distribute one primary variety from Finland called Finola, that doesn’t get more than five, five and a half feet tall. It’s not a very good fibre source, but we’re after the grain for our food production, and it makes it much easier for harvesting. And that’s one of the reasons why it’s so popular across the prairies.”
My last question to Clarence, not to sound facetious had to do with why is it essential to have this total traceability.
“Some consumers have a keen interest in where their food comes from. Consumers, in general, are more and more removed from the farm and daily farm production often generations removed from the farm. However, they are still very interested in how the food industry protects their food, where produced, and where it comes from, and we see that as a trend in the food industry,” said Swaluk. “We’re able to tell our story, a remarkable story that I get involved within visiting with our customers. Although I’m not responsible for food sales, I’m called into some of the meetings of our larger grocery buyers, to tell that story. And our grocery buyers are very interested in where the food comes from, the full traceability, and the fact that we have responsibility and accountability in every step along the way. It is a remarkable story for us as an organization because it shows that we can manage the entire account, the process, and every step of quality along the way, all the way to the consumer’s pantry, (and tummy).
As my note, I’ve watched this whole traceability discussion, the development of various Ag sector systems, the earlier frustrations when people had the right ideas, but not the technology, and only increased costs. Today we have the ideas, the technology, and costs have come way down, far outweighed by the benefits. •