GS1 to help FIA members manage safety and traceability
The non-profit organisation that developed the barcode has member organisations in 110 countries and manages the barcode standards used by retailers, manufacturers and suppliers.
GS1 has a million user companies, which do more than five billion transactions daily in 150 countries and its standards aim to help the efficiency, safety and visibility of supply chains.
FIA was founded in July 2010 and members include Cargill, Coca-Cola, Merieux NutriSciences, Covance, General Mills, DSM, Hershey’s, Kerry, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Unilever and Waters.
Matt Kovac, executive director at FIA, said: “I am confident that the team at GS1 will bring valuable expertise and knowledge to our committees and working groups, to support the industry’s collective efforts in improving nutrition, food safety and harmonised food standards for the benefit of all businesses and consumers in Asia.”
Liew Wai Leong, CEO of GS1 Singapore, said it will help FIA members in Asia and across the globe.
Liew added traceability needs to be based on common standards and it is a key foundation for food safety.
“The basis of a good traceability system starts off with being able to identify the items that you want to trace. So if you’re into selling meat, then to be able to uniquely identify the product is important,” he said.
GS1 provides companies with a unique identification number they can use with a barcode or Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) to tag products.
“If the company wants to track… all the way from farm to plate they can identify which farm the product comes from, all the way to the manufacturing processing centre, then to the distribution centre, and finally, to the retailer before it ends up on the consumer plate,” Liew added.
