- Email: [email protected]
The Future
Chapter | nine
The Future As long as outbreaks of foodborne infection continue, guidance documents published to provide the food transportation sector with a path to follow will slowly but surely change into laws. The evolution of serious and more preventive food safety systems is at an early stage, and just as surely as other industries have emerged from relative chaos, so too will the food supply chain. Along with the increasing legal requirements, new technologies continue to evolve as the private sector plans for and invents unique solutions to food safety and quality traceability, HACCP, training, record-keeping and sanitation solutions. These companies invest millions of dollars attempting to forecast new legal, market and liability solutions designed to serve future industry needs. New rules and laws seek to establish the new standards and systematic approaches to provide more preventive solutions than have been historically implemented. With more preventive approaches required, the demand by the food supply chain for new solutions increases to meet requirements for supply chain sectors. Although farms, packing houses, distribution centers, processors, restaurants and retail outlets serve as more focused targets for laws, standards and food safety system implementation, the transportation sector continues to run under the radar as a potentially significant contributor to food adulteration. The idea of protecting a continuous food chain that runs from ‘farm to fork’ but ignores significant requirements for change in the transportation sector sets the stage for a broken supply chain unless new directions are visualized and taken. The latent nature of food transportation safety in many countries opens the door to a new type of work, new jobs, and new opportunities requiring a new set of skills. As an older workforce moves towards retirement and new logistics personnel take over, training programs that prepare people to meet the new demands are required. New training needs, such as transportation food safety, might serve to embed well-established companies with the new technologies, policies and standards that are now moving to fill the void. Nothing about this is new. In the early 1980s the electronics industry was in a state of chaos similar to what can commonly be observed in the food industry today. Contamination of metal and electronic parts was as common as were the latent defects they caused. That situation was identical to the problems faced by food contaminated by adulterants today. The impact of the adulterant does not show up until days, weeks or even months later; and when the impact becomes Guide to Food Safety and Quality During Transportation. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-407775-1.00009-2 Copyright Ó 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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246 The Future observable, the scramble to find out where it came from and control it begins. Fingers point, the blame game starts, suppliers are ruined, business is lost and customers turn elsewhere. The industry began to embrace quality control as a strategy to correct this situation. Laboratories that took samples of parts in process were tested for contaminants, systems to control suppliers, transportation and process controls were put in place. Employees began to cover their shoes and put on ‘bunny suits’ before going through air showers and when entering factories that used hepa-filter air systems. Clean-dry air systems were put in and the use of deionized water became common. Training was improved. The industry complained about the cost of it all, but ROI was huge for those that moved forward, and those that did not implement the changes simply never expanded or grew in any way. The interesting thing about this was that the government was not involved. If a supplier could not meet quality requirements, they just ceased to exist. There was always another one to replace them. Traceability and sanitation became a must. Many companies installed testing laboratories to monitor processes so as to prevent contaminants that might later become latent defects and lead to failures. Most people do not usually think of electronics manufacturing in terms of parts contamination which can cause problems, but many chemicals, airborne or not, can contamine batches of parts, and those parts later go into electronic devices that are widely distributed. Then along came ISO. ISO 9000 became all the rage, and if a company was not certified, it simply was not included in the list of qualified vendors. A scramble was on for new thinkers and new doers to replace those who did not believe changes were necessary. Training and certification of individuals became a priority, and with the departure of many of the old timers and with a lot of new ideas and new problem solvers, change that embraced prevention became the norm. The thinking was not too complex: if you could prevent incoming failures or recalls through better controls, why not do so? As companies began to import more and more thanks to the lower labor costs in other countries, the international movement of goods created new problems that required more change. Electronic products today are much more reliable than before the 1980s. The auto and food industries could take a note from all this. The future of the food supply change is clear. Things are changing and must continue to do so; there is no going back. What is even more important is that in a couple of decades we will all wonder why we did not do it before.
ONE UP AND ONE DOWN IS DEAD The thinking behind ‘one up and one down’ was intended to get food supply chain entities to change their focus from what was right in front of them to taking a bit more responsibility for how supplies affected them and how their product affected their customers.
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Unfortunately, one up and one down is a short-sighted concept and will not lead a supply chain where it needs to be in today’s world of computers, internet, cell phones and other technologies. One up and one down is for those companies that run on paper and, like the electronics companies of the 1980s, their growth will be stunted. One up and one down thinking takes away the responsibility that any company in the supply chain has for food safety. If a company is a distribution center purchasing fresh produce from a farm and selling directly to retail outlets, one up and one down might work, because there really is not much of a supply chain. But most supply chains are much longer, and when liabilities come into play the blame game is extended, the search for the guilty more complex and time-consuming, and prevention becomes relatively impossible. How many months need to go by between a foodborne illness outbreak and discovery of the cause? Is a retailer who sold melons that caused customers to die responsible for their deaths? And in the middle of all this, and what makes perishables different, is the 2000-mile journey they must take until they reach a refrigerator. The almost complete lack of regulation or industry standard and the lack of focus on the transportation sector leave a giant void in any attempt to control food safety. Supply chain acceptance of transportation responsibilities that could serve as a preventive mechanism is minimal at best, and adoption is random. Throughout this book, laws, technologies, standards, systems and tools have been presented that provide forward-looking solutions one could expect to become normal over the next decade or two. The one up and one down concept establishes a thinking standard that is completely anti the supply chain visibility and cooperation required by the law or industry. It restricts the responsibility a company has for its suppliers in a day and age where tier-1 suppliers pay the fines for what those upstream from them did or did not do. The pushback is gaining momentum because many companies are implementing traceability and monitoring capable of pinpointing adulteration origins. And in the middle of all this, food on the move is basically ignored, as if by some miracle it will remain pure and wholesome while travelling from Chile to New York in the hands of six to ten different shipping companies. As such, the one up and one down concept is completely anti-prevention. New traceability, monitoring solutions and sanitation procedures for food transportation processes are required that help to establish visibility and control and identify transportation as a process. This is especially true for international shipments. The new FSMA professes that new requirements for foreign suppliers are to be established, and that those requirements will be the same as for domestic suppliers and that all supply chain players must maintain records related to origins, controls, handling and other data. Implementation of that concept will be increasingly difficult for an importeexport industry that relies on a paper trail, not to mention reefer temperatures or data loggers that do not provide any-time/anywhere shipment monitoring.
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A PATH Sometimes when change is in the air it helps to review history in order to gain a perspective on how things got to be the way they are. A poem [45] written by Sam Walter Foss provides us with a look at the general evolution of things.
The Calf-Path by Sam Walter Foss (1858e1911) One day, through the primeval wood, A calf walked home, as good calves should; But made a trail all bent askew, A crooked trail, as all calves do. Since then three hundred years have fled, And, I infer, the calf is dead. But still he left behind his trail, And thereby hangs my moral tale. The trail was taken up next day By a lone dog that passed that way; And then a wise bellwether sheep Pursued the trail o’er vale and steep, And drew the flock behind him, too, As good bellwethers always do. And from that day, o’er hill and glade, Through those old woods a path was made, And many men wound in and out, And dodged and turned and bent about, And uttered words of righteous wrath Because ‘twas such a crooked path; But still they followed d do not laugh d The first migrations of that calf, And through this winding wood-way stalked Because he wobbled when he walked. This forest path became a lane, That bent, and turned, and turned again. This crooked lane became a road, Where many a poor horse with his load Toiled on beneath the burning sun, And traveled some three miles in one. And thus a century and a half They trod the footsteps of that calf. The years passed on in swiftness fleet. The road became a village street,
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And this, before men were aware, A city’s crowded thoroughfare, And soon the central street was this Of a renowned metropolis; And men two centuries and a half Trod in the footsteps of that calf. Each day a hundred thousand rout Followed that zigzag calf about, And o’er his crooked journey went The traffic of a continent. A hundred thousand men were led By one calf near three centuries dead. They follow still his crooked way, And lose one hundred years a day, For thus such reverence is lent To well-established precedent. A moral lesson this might teach Were I ordained and called to preach; For men are prone to go it blind Along the calf-paths of the mind, And work away from sun to sun To do what other men have done. They follow in the beaten track, And out and in, and forth and back, And still their devious course pursue, To keep the path that others do. They keep the path a sacred groove, Along which all their lives they move; But how the wise old wood-gods laugh, Who saw the first primeval calf! Ah, many things this tale might teach d But I am not ordained to preach. Markets and Markets forecast that the cold chain market is poised to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.2% and to reach $157,142.2 million by 2017. The CAGR is a calculation that averages out growth in investments over multiple years. Of course forecasts are always questionable in terms of meaningfulness, but assuming this CAGR is close, these are big numbers. One can anticipate that as the cold chain industry continues to grow, more players and more technology will enter the market as each tries to outcompete each for market share. Hong Kong is preparing for this growth by supporting a GS1 effort to establish an internet cloud-based system capable of tracking and monitoring the condition and location of incoming goods. They call the system ezTrack and it is government
250 The Future supported. Taiwan’s government is focused on becoming the number one RFID manufacturing center in the world. That effort is also government supported. If we were to refocus on the FDA, we would notice that the FDA consists of more than the food side. By studying the drugs and medical devices side of the FDA, the future becomes significantly clearer. This side requires extensive supply chain management, traceability, sanitation and quality control. While the food side of the FDA slowly and gently pushes the food supply chain towards change, by looking at what is going on in the drugs and medical devices side, a picture of the future becomes clearer. Tighter and more preventive controls are in the future. While food safety is the primary objective, practices that embrace quality process and product controls will be increasingly employed to establish consistent procedures that force changes from current concepts of food quality. Today’s food quality definitions are focused primarily on appearance and taste. With appearance and taste in mind, product is sorted, inspected and produced by food technology and marketing specialists, with sales as the primary goal. As food safety concepts become more integrated into the supply chain, nutrition and adulteration will continue to add a balance that, under current marketing strategies for many companies, will provide new challenges they may or may not be able to meet without change. Consumers are becoming more and more educated about nutrition and the adulterants that are often inherent in a focus on taste and appearance. On the adulterant side, the food supply chain is currently incapable of and unprepared to identify and prevent adulterants during transportation processes. With shelflife hanging in the balance during long journeys to supermarkets, nutritional benefits deteriorate. Preventive transportation food safety and quality controls based on established standards and research must be incorporated into management and planning functions as part of the overall food safety picture. The standards, training, practices and technology required to improve transportation food safety and process quality exist today and are available to those companies with the foresight to understand the FDA shift from early stage FSMA rules toward the systems already established for drugs and medical devices.
SOME NEW TECHNOLOGIES The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Agreement on the International Carriage of Perishable Foodstuffs and on the Special Equipment to be Used for such Carriage [46] has been signed by nearly 50 contracting countries. The agreement calls for temperature-controlled vehicles (rail, sea, road) carrying food to maintain maximum temperatures, and requires container design, construction and testing prior to certification. In part, the document serves certification bodies wishing to classify food-carrying containers (insulated, refrigerated, mechanically refrigerated or heated) and, for food transported by road, makes it illegal to transport food internationally across borders without an ATP certificate.
Tests and Monitoring: The Dilemma 251 In addition to hiring and training new personnel, the requirement for new technologies capable of testing and certifying containers is driving many technological changes and changing demands in the perishable logistics sector. Technologies such as new box designs, carbon dioxide, landside (container port) and other intermodal infrastructures, dual compressors, GPS and temperature monitors requiring calibration now come into play, regardless of which company ships what food using what supplier. The problems encountered with a logistics mix that maintains each food mover’s independent right to say yes or no to changes in systems and technologies means that agreements regarding standardization are at best difficult when tier 1 companies wish to drive improvements down through the supply chain. The monitoring and data required by the tier 1 organization to determine supply chain compliance with sanitation, HACCP, temperature control and traceability standards are difficult to attain. Such monitoring mix situations between supply chain members and transporters mean that international agreements such as ISO or the ATP agreement referred to above are likely to gain traction to level the playing field. Policy changes and new contract requirements are required to solve these new problems. When cold chain supply chain players meet, great concern is expressed by grower/shippers and food carriers over the state of the reefer industry. The current lack of visibility concerning which ship is going where, or whether additional stops may be made to pick up or unload cargo, make moving food by ship somewhat unpredictable. Food shippers are beginning to demand real-time temperature and GPS monitoring as well as improved systems that provide the best available routing at the lowest costs from internet software and service companies that supply information similar to what now exists for air travelers. The opportunity for the food supply chain to adopt and adapt passenger scheduling reservation and reporting systems to improve routing, delivery times, monitoring and control is available for all types of container food transportation.
TESTS AND MONITORING: THE DILEMMA Prevention means finding and eliminating causes. In order to be able to find potential causes, measurement is critical. Unfortunately for the food industry in general, and for the transportation sector in particular, there is a general inability to rapidly detect adulterants in a cost-effective manner. Dependence is placed on visual inspection, and visual inspection is incapable of discovering most of the adulterants that can harm health or cause death. New technologies are needed. The best technologies currently available for measurement or monitoring today involve the use of sensors capable of reporting temperature, humidity, location, light, and other variables such as speed and tilt. Measurement of such variables means the measurement of process controls intended to keep a process operating in a stable and predictable manner. The assumption is that if the process is under control, the conditions in the process will minimize potential causes.
252 The Future None of these monitoring technologies measures adulteration. Since that is the case, the ability to prevent adulterants from entering the transportation sector by testing products, especially at the source, is lacking. If producers cannot ensure that the product placed into containers does not contain adulterants, and adulterants are present, temperature and humidity process monitors may reduce the likelihood that the adulterant will flourish, but if the process fails to maintain optimal and in-control conditions, as it frequently does, the adulterant that may be on the product is given the opportunity to proliferate. The need to develop new technologies capable of rapidly and cost-effectively testing soils, water and products at their origin is paramount and is missing from the food safety equation. Some of the current technologies for testing container sanitation and temperature controls have already been discussed, but others are in development. Test technologies are evolving for these process monitoring needs that can be expanded upon. Figure 9.1 shows a limited temperature monitor tag that uses chemicals to change the barcode to determine whether or not a shipment or pallet was above the established upper temperature limit for extended periods of time. The procedure is simple. The camera on a cell phone loaded with an application (ap) or a barcode reader is used to activate the tag. The tag is scanned or photographed with the cell phone that uploads the barcode data. The second step is to pull the tab on the left of the tag (arrow) and re-read the barcode. This initializes or activates the tag. The tag is then placed on a case or pallet and the shipment is under way. Figure 9.2 is the result of re-reading the tag with the reader at the end of the shipment. The figure shows the cell phone face with a result returned from a central server. In this case the words ‘Quality Code 4’ indicate that the shipment was exposed to temperatures >5 above the 41 limit. Somewhere during the shipment, this pallet of produce was exposed to excessive heat over a set period of time. The cost of these tags is under $3. They can only be used once, but are useful to sample container loads as a preliminary and relatively low-cost step before more intensive monitoring, such as the tag shown in Figure 9.3 and the computer antenna Figure 9.4 (sometimes called a ‘dongle’) are capable of providing.
FIGURE 9.1 Chemical Barcode Tag
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FIGURE 9.2 Cell Phone Readout
Figure 9.3 shows a plastic-encased monitor that can be placed in a cooler, container, or on the floor of a distribution center. These tags are battery operated, with battery replacement required every 2 years or so. Based on ZigBee technology, these tags cost about $200 each. They require no technological knowledge or help to install, since the sticky adhesive on the back will adhere to almost any surface. The tag is monitored by any laptop or desktop computer that has the dongle (Figure 9.4) attached to a USB port. Tags may be placed throughout a processing facility or distribution center to monitor all areas. Data are passed from tag to tag or through routers until they reach the dongle. The tag is approximately the size shown in the photo, whereas the dongle is about 4 inches long.
FIGURE 9.3 ZigBee (RF) Tag
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FIGURE 9.4 Dongle
For those interested in knowing a bit more about ZigBee technology, the following quote is from Wikipedia [47]: ‘ZigBee is a specification for a suite of high level communication protocols using small, low-power digital radios based on an IEEE 802 standard for personal area networks. ZigBee devices are often used in mesh network form to transmit data over longer distances, passing data through intermediate devices to reach more distant ones. This allows ZigBee networks to be formed ad-hoc, with no centralized control or high-power transmitter/receiver able to reach all of the devices. Any ZigBee device can be tasked with running the network. ZigBee is targeted at applications that require a low data rate, long battery life, and secure networking. ZigBee has a defined rate of 250 kbit/s, best suited for periodic or intermittent data or a single signal transmission from a sensor or input device. Applications include wireless light switches, electrical meters with in-home-displays, traffic management systems, and other consumer and industrial equipment that requires short-range wireless transfer of data at relatively low rates. The technology defined by the ZigBee specification is intended to be simpler and less expensive than other WPANs, such as Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. The name refers to the waggle dance of honey bees after their return to the beehive.’
Tests and Monitoring: The Dilemma 255 The temperature, humidity and other monitored data are passed into the computer, where software allows the user to map the location of each tag and to view temperature trends. The entire system requires almost no training or technical expertise and is used to monitor processing facilities, carriers, distribution centers including coolers, restaurant chains that need cool and hot spots monitored and data recorded, and retail outlets with display cases that must be monitored. It is reported that health and food safety inspectors and auditors are enamored with the reduced need to go through piles of temperature logs for each case or cooler in order to determine whether or not appropriate controls are in place. From a store management perspective, the time required for the manager or other employee to manually check thermometers each day and to record the data is basically reduced to the time it takes to quickly look at trend lines on a computer screen. Of equal importance is the ability of a corporate headquarters to tap into data passed from every truck, every distribution center and every store into a centralized computer and provide reporting that shows percent of compliance, for example; this makes management of the entire supply chain much simpler. The system also provides alerts via cell phone and email to all approved parties. The elimination of technical expertise, reduced man-hour requirements, improved monitoring and reporting, real-time alerts and other benefits make the ZigBee technology one of the best opportunities for supply chain process control. The hardware and software cost to install systems such as this throughout a restaurant or distribution center with multiple tags and store-level software is less than $5000. Such systems should be considered as real opportunities in terms of the ROI discussion presented in an earlier chapter. This system is completely developed, tested and marketed. A new component that provides real-time alerts for in-process transportation container monitoring data to be transmitted through cell phone technology is currently under development. This upgrade will allow managers to identify the exact time when temperatures went out of control. The system is very high grade, with exceptional manufacturing and design quality. All units undergo strenuous calibration and testing prior to delivery. The system is designed to withstand hot water and chemical washes that might be used to sanitize container interiors. Batteries last up to 2 years and may be changed. The system is currently in heavy use in the drug and medical industries in Europe and the United States. Figure 9.5 shows a second ZigBee system that is now under development by a Taiwanese company. The plastic cover shown in Figure 9.3 has been removed, revealing the silver (lithium) battery on the left of the photo and the single-layer circuit board on the right. At the top of the circuit board is the liquid crystal display (LCD) that reports data through a clear spot in the plastic cover (not shown). Figure 9.6 shows the dongle that receives and enters monitored data into the computer. The dongle plugs directly into a USB port and requires no cord.
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FIGURE 9.5 ZigBee Tag Circuitry
FIGURE 9.6 Dongle
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FIGURE 9.7 ZigBee System Configuration Screen
The exposed tag shown in Figure 9.5 is approximately the same size as that shown in Figure 9.3, while the dongle shown in Figure 9.6 is approximately 3 inches in length. This tag is currently in prototype production and should be available in 2014. The finished tag cost will be <$50 and will last 2 years before the battery needs replacement. Overall cost for this system when installed in a distribution center such as that described above should be well under $2000. Figures 9.7 and 9.8 show screen photos of the computer image presented for controlling and reading the tag shown in Figure 9.5. On the left side of the screen, the tag is identified as number 17. There are buttons to initialize, configure, observe real-time measurements and look at historical trends. Under the configuration screen, the recording interval may be set to as low as 1 second or as long as once every 18 hours. The start and stop buttons
FIGURE 9.8 ZigBee Real-Time Data Computer Display
258 The Future enable local control, and the location of the tag is recoded in the waypoint screen. Other features are available, as shown in Figure 9.8, which shows real-time temperature, humidity and illumination data. This cheaper ZigBee system can be configured to include any number of different sensors for different applications. Although not as sophisticated or well developed as the system shown in Figures 9.3 and 9.4, the greatly reduced cost makes it a good solution for smaller operations not needing to meet corporate reporting requirements.
ALUMINUM PALLETS ON THE RISE Figure 9.9 is a new development in pallet technology. The pallets are made of 11 gauge aluminum, weigh 44 pounds and are advertised to cost about 50% less than wooden pallets, with an ROI of 3 years. A special version for cold storage is also offered. Aluminum pallets can hold up to 3000 pounds and may be deployed with some types of humidity tracking and reporting systems along with anti-theft devices. Aluminum pallets also offer the advantage of being able to be sanitized, and may be a good replacement for those companies that can pool pallets for return trips.
NEW NEEDS FOR THE FOOD TRANSPORTATION SECTOR New requirements are emerging. With companies always keeping an eye on costs as well as food safety and customer needs, and with technology and other suppliers always keeping an eye on customer demand, research and development are always seeking new solutions. Solutions that offer centralized software systems to collect monitoring and compliance data are required for supply chain record keeping. This is especially true since evolving legal requirements require complete supply chain information that provides recall specialists with the information they need to quickly find potential outbreak sources, and with the call by food shippers for greater visibility. And because of a refocus on transportation food safety, the necessary changes affect many industries not directly involved in the production, processing or sale of food.
FIGURE 9.9 Aluminum Pallet. (Photo with permission from i-pallets.)
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FIGURE 9.10 US Census Bureau World Population Forecast
SEAPORTS Competition among the world’s seaports is increasing and facing new challenges. Ship sizes continue to increase, creating the need for new investments at many seaports. In 2007, a significant expansion of the Panama Canal was begun that will create new demand for many of the world’s ports to begin expansion projects to accommodate the super-ships that are under development to carry larger and larger shipments. As world trade increases along with the world’s population (Figure 9.10) and the demand for goods, economy of scale challenges continue to evolve. Containerized transportation continues to replace bulk cargo strategies, further creating the need for ports to upgrade and expand their facilities and the inland transportation infrastructure necessary to meet these greater product movement needs. The impact of population growth cannot be underestimated. In 1950, the population of the earth was just above 2.5 billion people. Assuming a person born then lived for 80 years or until the year 2030, the world population could reach about 8.33 billion. That means that the population will have more than tripled during that lifetime, resulting in food delivery systems that have become infinitely more complex and difficult to control. The impact of this presents challenges not only in terms of transportation food safety but also in terms of food security. In some ports, new requirements are already evolving that affect the transportation sector. Los Angeles, for example, requires that the trucking industry meet new environmental requirements in order to reduce the impact of the port on the carbon footprint. Other ports are offering container sanitation services and advertising themselves as cold chain food safety specialists in order to attract businesses demanding high-quality delivery services. Such changes require huge investments, but are in response to consumer demands for safe food.
260 The Future At this point, intermodal food transportation systems, such as moving containers from ships to trucks, or from trucks to and from rail, are stressed in terms of their ability to meet increasing demands. Inland port facilities are likewise caught up in the need to evolve or die. This means huge investment is required in port facilities to attract new business opportunities.
TRADE GROUPS TAKE THE LEAD With the inability of international governments to develop or adopt transportation food safety agreements, trade groups that involve the larger international food supply companies are forming. Companies such as ConAgra Foods Inc. (CAG), Kraft Foods Inc. (KFT) and Walmart cannot and will not wait for any government mandates when it comes to food safety. They study and approve standards.
THE USE OF STATISTICAL PROCEDURES FOR ANALYSIS OF MEGA DATABASES Many of the technological and legal changes on the horizon are designed to collect massive amounts of data that were previously stuffed into file cabinets. As with most other industries that have undergone similar changes, the demand arises for new talent with new knowledge. This is especially true when traceability, sanitation, HACCP and other documentation continues to proliferate. Along with this growth of demand for data comes the need for storage and analysis. And analysis means statistical treatment of the data in order to reduce it to a useable form. While the threat of having to ‘take a statistics class’ looms heavy in the minds of most people, new software will reduce the need to actually manipulate raw data using statistical procedures. Software companies are beginning to provide packaged software capable of easing a company’s entry into the world of data analysis. SPC has been around for a long time, and the adaptation of statistical procedures capable of summarizing transportation data into useful information and charts is well under way. At the click of a button, a corporate manager is able to look at graphical trends with software-calculated control limits using only an understanding of what the trends are telling and without knowing anything about statistical procedures. Most companies that are reasonably well managed are already using many statistical procedures without calling them that, but the sheer volume of data required for traceability and other record keeping create such large-scale databases that there is a lag between data collection and data analysis. This can lead to software companies charging huge amounts to customize reporting systems. Picking an analysis and reporting package that meets the company’s demands as delivered is critical to controlling the costs associated with making software changes and upgrades at a later date. In many industries, the statistical expertise an individual might acquire from taking a statistics class, especially one tailored to the industry, can provide new
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employment opportunities for those individuals choosing to climb the employment ladder. The demand for such expertise will accelerate in the next few years as it has in sports, firefighting, healthcare, operations and quality control. As new laws continue to veer towards combining food safety and quality into a more unified and professional approach, the demand for those educated in statistical procedures will increase.
CALIBRATION Measuring device calibration has already been discussed as a critical component of safety systems. Calibration services for devices that measure temperatures, pressures, locations or speeds is a requirement in ISO and the standards discusses in previous chapters. Transporters, maintenance stations and those involved in transportation food safety will be required to establish and maintain device calibration. ISO 22000 will become the established standard for the food safety industry on a worldwide basis. Calibration is a critical component of ISO 22000.
FSMA IMPACT ON THE INTERNATIONAL FOOD SAFETY COMMUNITY New FSMA-proposed rules would require that specified firms have written plans to identify potential hazards, put in place steps to address them, verify that the steps are working, and outline how to correct any problems that arise. The rules propose that each covered facility prepare and implement a written food safety plan that would include the following: hazard analysis risk-based preventive controls monitoring procedures corrective actions verification record keeping. As the FDA and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) publish proposed rules for comment, other countries are quick to take notice and establish local food safety rules that will drive their own food supply chains to comply with the FDA in order to ensure that their own exports are in compliance. Although on the surface the FSMA rules seem to be rather basic from the perspective of food safety and quality, US business and political forces are quick to respond in order to attempt to block, delay or weaken the requirements. Nevertheless, other countries desiring to import food into the United States must comply, because of barriers erected by the US Customs and Border Protection and Department of Homeland Security that were worked out with the FDA as it pursues identical food safety requirements for both domestic and international trade. In Europe, many countries are more progressively pro food safety than the United States in terms of the controls and systems that must be established to l l l l l l
262 The Future protect the public. The nature of international food transportation among neighbors in such close proximity to each other tends to provide an atmosphere where each must protect its own, and this is accomplished to a great degree through acceptance of ISO standards. At this point in time, neither traceability nor FSMA Section 211 (transportation) rules have been published or entered the cycles required for public comment. Both topics will surely lead to heated debate and questions about enforcement. With the FDA unable to enforce either old or new rules with any degree of integrity because of budget shortfalls, the clouds over food safety in the US continue to provide an atmosphere of waiting.
HOMEOSTASIS: ACHIEVING STABILITY IN FOOD TRANSPORTATION PROCESSES Wikipedia defines homeostasis as ‘a process in which the body’s internal environment is kept stable’ [48]. In our case, food transportation is the body and food transportation is the process. The technologies, controls, practices and standards established in previous chapters are all intended to achieve system stability, regardless of transportation sector or type. A breakdown in any process throughout the food supply chain means potential failure for all involved. Establishing and maintaining a certified food transportation stream is critical to the prevention of problems related to health and death for consumers dependent on competent and dedicated quality food processors, producers and the transportation sector on which they depend. Achieving homeostasis depends on transportation and businesses that physically move food choosing to develop policies, procedures and practices dedicated to prevention. While many food and transportation companies are far along in terms of defining and achieving competent controls, most have overlooked or intentionally ignored such needs, regardless of any legal requirements. As other food safety requirements and systems continue to evolve to grow, process and deliver safe food, the transportation sector will be continually challenged to demonstrate competency. The implementation of an overall compliant transportation food safety system takes time, but it can be achieved e one step at a time. The goal of an integrated food safety system that includes transportation processes capable of providing government and business entities with needed visibility and controls still remains. For those unsure of where to start e start somewhere.
The Future As long as outbreaks of foodborne infection continue, guidance documents published to provide the food transportation sector with a path to follow will slowly but surely change into laws. The evolution of serious and more preventive food safety systems is at an early stage, and just as surely as other industries have emerged from relative chaos, so too will the food supply chain. Along with the increasing legal requirements, new technologies continue to evolve as the private sector plans for and invents unique solutions to food safety and quality traceability, HACCP, training, record-keeping and sanitation solutions. These companies invest millions of dollars attempting to forecast new legal, market and liability solutions designed to serve future industry needs. New rules and laws seek to establish the new standards and systematic approaches to provide more preventive solutions than have been historically implemented. With more preventive approaches required, the demand by the food supply chain for new solutions increases to meet requirements for supply chain sectors. Although farms, packing houses, distribution centers, processors, restaurants and retail outlets serve as more focused targets for laws, standards and food safety system implementation, the transportation sector continues to run under the radar as a potentially significant contributor to food adulteration. The idea of protecting a continuous food chain that runs from ‘farm to fork’ but ignores significant requirements for change in the transportation sector sets the stage for a broken supply chain unless new directions are visualized and taken. The latent nature of food transportation safety in many countries opens the door to a new type of work, new jobs, and new opportunities requiring a new set of skills. As an older workforce moves towards retirement and new logistics personnel take over, training programs that prepare people to meet the new demands are required. New training needs, such as transportation food safety, might serve to embed well-established companies with the new technologies, policies and standards that are now moving to fill the void. Nothing about this is new. In the early 1980s the electronics industry was in a state of chaos similar to what can commonly be observed in the food industry today. Contamination of metal and electronic parts was as common as were the latent defects they caused. That situation was identical to the problems faced by food contaminated by adulterants today. The impact of the adulterant does not show up until days, weeks or even months later; and when the impact becomes Guide to Food Safety and Quality During Transportation. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-407775-1.00009-2 Copyright Ó 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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246 The Future observable, the scramble to find out where it came from and control it begins. Fingers point, the blame game starts, suppliers are ruined, business is lost and customers turn elsewhere. The industry began to embrace quality control as a strategy to correct this situation. Laboratories that took samples of parts in process were tested for contaminants, systems to control suppliers, transportation and process controls were put in place. Employees began to cover their shoes and put on ‘bunny suits’ before going through air showers and when entering factories that used hepa-filter air systems. Clean-dry air systems were put in and the use of deionized water became common. Training was improved. The industry complained about the cost of it all, but ROI was huge for those that moved forward, and those that did not implement the changes simply never expanded or grew in any way. The interesting thing about this was that the government was not involved. If a supplier could not meet quality requirements, they just ceased to exist. There was always another one to replace them. Traceability and sanitation became a must. Many companies installed testing laboratories to monitor processes so as to prevent contaminants that might later become latent defects and lead to failures. Most people do not usually think of electronics manufacturing in terms of parts contamination which can cause problems, but many chemicals, airborne or not, can contamine batches of parts, and those parts later go into electronic devices that are widely distributed. Then along came ISO. ISO 9000 became all the rage, and if a company was not certified, it simply was not included in the list of qualified vendors. A scramble was on for new thinkers and new doers to replace those who did not believe changes were necessary. Training and certification of individuals became a priority, and with the departure of many of the old timers and with a lot of new ideas and new problem solvers, change that embraced prevention became the norm. The thinking was not too complex: if you could prevent incoming failures or recalls through better controls, why not do so? As companies began to import more and more thanks to the lower labor costs in other countries, the international movement of goods created new problems that required more change. Electronic products today are much more reliable than before the 1980s. The auto and food industries could take a note from all this. The future of the food supply change is clear. Things are changing and must continue to do so; there is no going back. What is even more important is that in a couple of decades we will all wonder why we did not do it before.
ONE UP AND ONE DOWN IS DEAD The thinking behind ‘one up and one down’ was intended to get food supply chain entities to change their focus from what was right in front of them to taking a bit more responsibility for how supplies affected them and how their product affected their customers.
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Unfortunately, one up and one down is a short-sighted concept and will not lead a supply chain where it needs to be in today’s world of computers, internet, cell phones and other technologies. One up and one down is for those companies that run on paper and, like the electronics companies of the 1980s, their growth will be stunted. One up and one down thinking takes away the responsibility that any company in the supply chain has for food safety. If a company is a distribution center purchasing fresh produce from a farm and selling directly to retail outlets, one up and one down might work, because there really is not much of a supply chain. But most supply chains are much longer, and when liabilities come into play the blame game is extended, the search for the guilty more complex and time-consuming, and prevention becomes relatively impossible. How many months need to go by between a foodborne illness outbreak and discovery of the cause? Is a retailer who sold melons that caused customers to die responsible for their deaths? And in the middle of all this, and what makes perishables different, is the 2000-mile journey they must take until they reach a refrigerator. The almost complete lack of regulation or industry standard and the lack of focus on the transportation sector leave a giant void in any attempt to control food safety. Supply chain acceptance of transportation responsibilities that could serve as a preventive mechanism is minimal at best, and adoption is random. Throughout this book, laws, technologies, standards, systems and tools have been presented that provide forward-looking solutions one could expect to become normal over the next decade or two. The one up and one down concept establishes a thinking standard that is completely anti the supply chain visibility and cooperation required by the law or industry. It restricts the responsibility a company has for its suppliers in a day and age where tier-1 suppliers pay the fines for what those upstream from them did or did not do. The pushback is gaining momentum because many companies are implementing traceability and monitoring capable of pinpointing adulteration origins. And in the middle of all this, food on the move is basically ignored, as if by some miracle it will remain pure and wholesome while travelling from Chile to New York in the hands of six to ten different shipping companies. As such, the one up and one down concept is completely anti-prevention. New traceability, monitoring solutions and sanitation procedures for food transportation processes are required that help to establish visibility and control and identify transportation as a process. This is especially true for international shipments. The new FSMA professes that new requirements for foreign suppliers are to be established, and that those requirements will be the same as for domestic suppliers and that all supply chain players must maintain records related to origins, controls, handling and other data. Implementation of that concept will be increasingly difficult for an importeexport industry that relies on a paper trail, not to mention reefer temperatures or data loggers that do not provide any-time/anywhere shipment monitoring.
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A PATH Sometimes when change is in the air it helps to review history in order to gain a perspective on how things got to be the way they are. A poem [45] written by Sam Walter Foss provides us with a look at the general evolution of things.
The Calf-Path by Sam Walter Foss (1858e1911) One day, through the primeval wood, A calf walked home, as good calves should; But made a trail all bent askew, A crooked trail, as all calves do. Since then three hundred years have fled, And, I infer, the calf is dead. But still he left behind his trail, And thereby hangs my moral tale. The trail was taken up next day By a lone dog that passed that way; And then a wise bellwether sheep Pursued the trail o’er vale and steep, And drew the flock behind him, too, As good bellwethers always do. And from that day, o’er hill and glade, Through those old woods a path was made, And many men wound in and out, And dodged and turned and bent about, And uttered words of righteous wrath Because ‘twas such a crooked path; But still they followed d do not laugh d The first migrations of that calf, And through this winding wood-way stalked Because he wobbled when he walked. This forest path became a lane, That bent, and turned, and turned again. This crooked lane became a road, Where many a poor horse with his load Toiled on beneath the burning sun, And traveled some three miles in one. And thus a century and a half They trod the footsteps of that calf. The years passed on in swiftness fleet. The road became a village street,
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And this, before men were aware, A city’s crowded thoroughfare, And soon the central street was this Of a renowned metropolis; And men two centuries and a half Trod in the footsteps of that calf. Each day a hundred thousand rout Followed that zigzag calf about, And o’er his crooked journey went The traffic of a continent. A hundred thousand men were led By one calf near three centuries dead. They follow still his crooked way, And lose one hundred years a day, For thus such reverence is lent To well-established precedent. A moral lesson this might teach Were I ordained and called to preach; For men are prone to go it blind Along the calf-paths of the mind, And work away from sun to sun To do what other men have done. They follow in the beaten track, And out and in, and forth and back, And still their devious course pursue, To keep the path that others do. They keep the path a sacred groove, Along which all their lives they move; But how the wise old wood-gods laugh, Who saw the first primeval calf! Ah, many things this tale might teach d But I am not ordained to preach. Markets and Markets forecast that the cold chain market is poised to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.2% and to reach $157,142.2 million by 2017. The CAGR is a calculation that averages out growth in investments over multiple years. Of course forecasts are always questionable in terms of meaningfulness, but assuming this CAGR is close, these are big numbers. One can anticipate that as the cold chain industry continues to grow, more players and more technology will enter the market as each tries to outcompete each for market share. Hong Kong is preparing for this growth by supporting a GS1 effort to establish an internet cloud-based system capable of tracking and monitoring the condition and location of incoming goods. They call the system ezTrack and it is government
250 The Future supported. Taiwan’s government is focused on becoming the number one RFID manufacturing center in the world. That effort is also government supported. If we were to refocus on the FDA, we would notice that the FDA consists of more than the food side. By studying the drugs and medical devices side of the FDA, the future becomes significantly clearer. This side requires extensive supply chain management, traceability, sanitation and quality control. While the food side of the FDA slowly and gently pushes the food supply chain towards change, by looking at what is going on in the drugs and medical devices side, a picture of the future becomes clearer. Tighter and more preventive controls are in the future. While food safety is the primary objective, practices that embrace quality process and product controls will be increasingly employed to establish consistent procedures that force changes from current concepts of food quality. Today’s food quality definitions are focused primarily on appearance and taste. With appearance and taste in mind, product is sorted, inspected and produced by food technology and marketing specialists, with sales as the primary goal. As food safety concepts become more integrated into the supply chain, nutrition and adulteration will continue to add a balance that, under current marketing strategies for many companies, will provide new challenges they may or may not be able to meet without change. Consumers are becoming more and more educated about nutrition and the adulterants that are often inherent in a focus on taste and appearance. On the adulterant side, the food supply chain is currently incapable of and unprepared to identify and prevent adulterants during transportation processes. With shelflife hanging in the balance during long journeys to supermarkets, nutritional benefits deteriorate. Preventive transportation food safety and quality controls based on established standards and research must be incorporated into management and planning functions as part of the overall food safety picture. The standards, training, practices and technology required to improve transportation food safety and process quality exist today and are available to those companies with the foresight to understand the FDA shift from early stage FSMA rules toward the systems already established for drugs and medical devices.
SOME NEW TECHNOLOGIES The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Agreement on the International Carriage of Perishable Foodstuffs and on the Special Equipment to be Used for such Carriage [46] has been signed by nearly 50 contracting countries. The agreement calls for temperature-controlled vehicles (rail, sea, road) carrying food to maintain maximum temperatures, and requires container design, construction and testing prior to certification. In part, the document serves certification bodies wishing to classify food-carrying containers (insulated, refrigerated, mechanically refrigerated or heated) and, for food transported by road, makes it illegal to transport food internationally across borders without an ATP certificate.
Tests and Monitoring: The Dilemma 251 In addition to hiring and training new personnel, the requirement for new technologies capable of testing and certifying containers is driving many technological changes and changing demands in the perishable logistics sector. Technologies such as new box designs, carbon dioxide, landside (container port) and other intermodal infrastructures, dual compressors, GPS and temperature monitors requiring calibration now come into play, regardless of which company ships what food using what supplier. The problems encountered with a logistics mix that maintains each food mover’s independent right to say yes or no to changes in systems and technologies means that agreements regarding standardization are at best difficult when tier 1 companies wish to drive improvements down through the supply chain. The monitoring and data required by the tier 1 organization to determine supply chain compliance with sanitation, HACCP, temperature control and traceability standards are difficult to attain. Such monitoring mix situations between supply chain members and transporters mean that international agreements such as ISO or the ATP agreement referred to above are likely to gain traction to level the playing field. Policy changes and new contract requirements are required to solve these new problems. When cold chain supply chain players meet, great concern is expressed by grower/shippers and food carriers over the state of the reefer industry. The current lack of visibility concerning which ship is going where, or whether additional stops may be made to pick up or unload cargo, make moving food by ship somewhat unpredictable. Food shippers are beginning to demand real-time temperature and GPS monitoring as well as improved systems that provide the best available routing at the lowest costs from internet software and service companies that supply information similar to what now exists for air travelers. The opportunity for the food supply chain to adopt and adapt passenger scheduling reservation and reporting systems to improve routing, delivery times, monitoring and control is available for all types of container food transportation.
TESTS AND MONITORING: THE DILEMMA Prevention means finding and eliminating causes. In order to be able to find potential causes, measurement is critical. Unfortunately for the food industry in general, and for the transportation sector in particular, there is a general inability to rapidly detect adulterants in a cost-effective manner. Dependence is placed on visual inspection, and visual inspection is incapable of discovering most of the adulterants that can harm health or cause death. New technologies are needed. The best technologies currently available for measurement or monitoring today involve the use of sensors capable of reporting temperature, humidity, location, light, and other variables such as speed and tilt. Measurement of such variables means the measurement of process controls intended to keep a process operating in a stable and predictable manner. The assumption is that if the process is under control, the conditions in the process will minimize potential causes.
252 The Future None of these monitoring technologies measures adulteration. Since that is the case, the ability to prevent adulterants from entering the transportation sector by testing products, especially at the source, is lacking. If producers cannot ensure that the product placed into containers does not contain adulterants, and adulterants are present, temperature and humidity process monitors may reduce the likelihood that the adulterant will flourish, but if the process fails to maintain optimal and in-control conditions, as it frequently does, the adulterant that may be on the product is given the opportunity to proliferate. The need to develop new technologies capable of rapidly and cost-effectively testing soils, water and products at their origin is paramount and is missing from the food safety equation. Some of the current technologies for testing container sanitation and temperature controls have already been discussed, but others are in development. Test technologies are evolving for these process monitoring needs that can be expanded upon. Figure 9.1 shows a limited temperature monitor tag that uses chemicals to change the barcode to determine whether or not a shipment or pallet was above the established upper temperature limit for extended periods of time. The procedure is simple. The camera on a cell phone loaded with an application (ap) or a barcode reader is used to activate the tag. The tag is scanned or photographed with the cell phone that uploads the barcode data. The second step is to pull the tab on the left of the tag (arrow) and re-read the barcode. This initializes or activates the tag. The tag is then placed on a case or pallet and the shipment is under way. Figure 9.2 is the result of re-reading the tag with the reader at the end of the shipment. The figure shows the cell phone face with a result returned from a central server. In this case the words ‘Quality Code 4’ indicate that the shipment was exposed to temperatures >5 above the 41 limit. Somewhere during the shipment, this pallet of produce was exposed to excessive heat over a set period of time. The cost of these tags is under $3. They can only be used once, but are useful to sample container loads as a preliminary and relatively low-cost step before more intensive monitoring, such as the tag shown in Figure 9.3 and the computer antenna Figure 9.4 (sometimes called a ‘dongle’) are capable of providing.
FIGURE 9.1 Chemical Barcode Tag
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FIGURE 9.2 Cell Phone Readout
Figure 9.3 shows a plastic-encased monitor that can be placed in a cooler, container, or on the floor of a distribution center. These tags are battery operated, with battery replacement required every 2 years or so. Based on ZigBee technology, these tags cost about $200 each. They require no technological knowledge or help to install, since the sticky adhesive on the back will adhere to almost any surface. The tag is monitored by any laptop or desktop computer that has the dongle (Figure 9.4) attached to a USB port. Tags may be placed throughout a processing facility or distribution center to monitor all areas. Data are passed from tag to tag or through routers until they reach the dongle. The tag is approximately the size shown in the photo, whereas the dongle is about 4 inches long.
FIGURE 9.3 ZigBee (RF) Tag
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FIGURE 9.4 Dongle
For those interested in knowing a bit more about ZigBee technology, the following quote is from Wikipedia [47]: ‘ZigBee is a specification for a suite of high level communication protocols using small, low-power digital radios based on an IEEE 802 standard for personal area networks. ZigBee devices are often used in mesh network form to transmit data over longer distances, passing data through intermediate devices to reach more distant ones. This allows ZigBee networks to be formed ad-hoc, with no centralized control or high-power transmitter/receiver able to reach all of the devices. Any ZigBee device can be tasked with running the network. ZigBee is targeted at applications that require a low data rate, long battery life, and secure networking. ZigBee has a defined rate of 250 kbit/s, best suited for periodic or intermittent data or a single signal transmission from a sensor or input device. Applications include wireless light switches, electrical meters with in-home-displays, traffic management systems, and other consumer and industrial equipment that requires short-range wireless transfer of data at relatively low rates. The technology defined by the ZigBee specification is intended to be simpler and less expensive than other WPANs, such as Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. The name refers to the waggle dance of honey bees after their return to the beehive.’
Tests and Monitoring: The Dilemma 255 The temperature, humidity and other monitored data are passed into the computer, where software allows the user to map the location of each tag and to view temperature trends. The entire system requires almost no training or technical expertise and is used to monitor processing facilities, carriers, distribution centers including coolers, restaurant chains that need cool and hot spots monitored and data recorded, and retail outlets with display cases that must be monitored. It is reported that health and food safety inspectors and auditors are enamored with the reduced need to go through piles of temperature logs for each case or cooler in order to determine whether or not appropriate controls are in place. From a store management perspective, the time required for the manager or other employee to manually check thermometers each day and to record the data is basically reduced to the time it takes to quickly look at trend lines on a computer screen. Of equal importance is the ability of a corporate headquarters to tap into data passed from every truck, every distribution center and every store into a centralized computer and provide reporting that shows percent of compliance, for example; this makes management of the entire supply chain much simpler. The system also provides alerts via cell phone and email to all approved parties. The elimination of technical expertise, reduced man-hour requirements, improved monitoring and reporting, real-time alerts and other benefits make the ZigBee technology one of the best opportunities for supply chain process control. The hardware and software cost to install systems such as this throughout a restaurant or distribution center with multiple tags and store-level software is less than $5000. Such systems should be considered as real opportunities in terms of the ROI discussion presented in an earlier chapter. This system is completely developed, tested and marketed. A new component that provides real-time alerts for in-process transportation container monitoring data to be transmitted through cell phone technology is currently under development. This upgrade will allow managers to identify the exact time when temperatures went out of control. The system is very high grade, with exceptional manufacturing and design quality. All units undergo strenuous calibration and testing prior to delivery. The system is designed to withstand hot water and chemical washes that might be used to sanitize container interiors. Batteries last up to 2 years and may be changed. The system is currently in heavy use in the drug and medical industries in Europe and the United States. Figure 9.5 shows a second ZigBee system that is now under development by a Taiwanese company. The plastic cover shown in Figure 9.3 has been removed, revealing the silver (lithium) battery on the left of the photo and the single-layer circuit board on the right. At the top of the circuit board is the liquid crystal display (LCD) that reports data through a clear spot in the plastic cover (not shown). Figure 9.6 shows the dongle that receives and enters monitored data into the computer. The dongle plugs directly into a USB port and requires no cord.
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FIGURE 9.5 ZigBee Tag Circuitry
FIGURE 9.6 Dongle
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FIGURE 9.7 ZigBee System Configuration Screen
The exposed tag shown in Figure 9.5 is approximately the same size as that shown in Figure 9.3, while the dongle shown in Figure 9.6 is approximately 3 inches in length. This tag is currently in prototype production and should be available in 2014. The finished tag cost will be <$50 and will last 2 years before the battery needs replacement. Overall cost for this system when installed in a distribution center such as that described above should be well under $2000. Figures 9.7 and 9.8 show screen photos of the computer image presented for controlling and reading the tag shown in Figure 9.5. On the left side of the screen, the tag is identified as number 17. There are buttons to initialize, configure, observe real-time measurements and look at historical trends. Under the configuration screen, the recording interval may be set to as low as 1 second or as long as once every 18 hours. The start and stop buttons
FIGURE 9.8 ZigBee Real-Time Data Computer Display
258 The Future enable local control, and the location of the tag is recoded in the waypoint screen. Other features are available, as shown in Figure 9.8, which shows real-time temperature, humidity and illumination data. This cheaper ZigBee system can be configured to include any number of different sensors for different applications. Although not as sophisticated or well developed as the system shown in Figures 9.3 and 9.4, the greatly reduced cost makes it a good solution for smaller operations not needing to meet corporate reporting requirements.
ALUMINUM PALLETS ON THE RISE Figure 9.9 is a new development in pallet technology. The pallets are made of 11 gauge aluminum, weigh 44 pounds and are advertised to cost about 50% less than wooden pallets, with an ROI of 3 years. A special version for cold storage is also offered. Aluminum pallets can hold up to 3000 pounds and may be deployed with some types of humidity tracking and reporting systems along with anti-theft devices. Aluminum pallets also offer the advantage of being able to be sanitized, and may be a good replacement for those companies that can pool pallets for return trips.
NEW NEEDS FOR THE FOOD TRANSPORTATION SECTOR New requirements are emerging. With companies always keeping an eye on costs as well as food safety and customer needs, and with technology and other suppliers always keeping an eye on customer demand, research and development are always seeking new solutions. Solutions that offer centralized software systems to collect monitoring and compliance data are required for supply chain record keeping. This is especially true since evolving legal requirements require complete supply chain information that provides recall specialists with the information they need to quickly find potential outbreak sources, and with the call by food shippers for greater visibility. And because of a refocus on transportation food safety, the necessary changes affect many industries not directly involved in the production, processing or sale of food.
FIGURE 9.9 Aluminum Pallet. (Photo with permission from i-pallets.)
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FIGURE 9.10 US Census Bureau World Population Forecast
SEAPORTS Competition among the world’s seaports is increasing and facing new challenges. Ship sizes continue to increase, creating the need for new investments at many seaports. In 2007, a significant expansion of the Panama Canal was begun that will create new demand for many of the world’s ports to begin expansion projects to accommodate the super-ships that are under development to carry larger and larger shipments. As world trade increases along with the world’s population (Figure 9.10) and the demand for goods, economy of scale challenges continue to evolve. Containerized transportation continues to replace bulk cargo strategies, further creating the need for ports to upgrade and expand their facilities and the inland transportation infrastructure necessary to meet these greater product movement needs. The impact of population growth cannot be underestimated. In 1950, the population of the earth was just above 2.5 billion people. Assuming a person born then lived for 80 years or until the year 2030, the world population could reach about 8.33 billion. That means that the population will have more than tripled during that lifetime, resulting in food delivery systems that have become infinitely more complex and difficult to control. The impact of this presents challenges not only in terms of transportation food safety but also in terms of food security. In some ports, new requirements are already evolving that affect the transportation sector. Los Angeles, for example, requires that the trucking industry meet new environmental requirements in order to reduce the impact of the port on the carbon footprint. Other ports are offering container sanitation services and advertising themselves as cold chain food safety specialists in order to attract businesses demanding high-quality delivery services. Such changes require huge investments, but are in response to consumer demands for safe food.
260 The Future At this point, intermodal food transportation systems, such as moving containers from ships to trucks, or from trucks to and from rail, are stressed in terms of their ability to meet increasing demands. Inland port facilities are likewise caught up in the need to evolve or die. This means huge investment is required in port facilities to attract new business opportunities.
TRADE GROUPS TAKE THE LEAD With the inability of international governments to develop or adopt transportation food safety agreements, trade groups that involve the larger international food supply companies are forming. Companies such as ConAgra Foods Inc. (CAG), Kraft Foods Inc. (KFT) and Walmart cannot and will not wait for any government mandates when it comes to food safety. They study and approve standards.
THE USE OF STATISTICAL PROCEDURES FOR ANALYSIS OF MEGA DATABASES Many of the technological and legal changes on the horizon are designed to collect massive amounts of data that were previously stuffed into file cabinets. As with most other industries that have undergone similar changes, the demand arises for new talent with new knowledge. This is especially true when traceability, sanitation, HACCP and other documentation continues to proliferate. Along with this growth of demand for data comes the need for storage and analysis. And analysis means statistical treatment of the data in order to reduce it to a useable form. While the threat of having to ‘take a statistics class’ looms heavy in the minds of most people, new software will reduce the need to actually manipulate raw data using statistical procedures. Software companies are beginning to provide packaged software capable of easing a company’s entry into the world of data analysis. SPC has been around for a long time, and the adaptation of statistical procedures capable of summarizing transportation data into useful information and charts is well under way. At the click of a button, a corporate manager is able to look at graphical trends with software-calculated control limits using only an understanding of what the trends are telling and without knowing anything about statistical procedures. Most companies that are reasonably well managed are already using many statistical procedures without calling them that, but the sheer volume of data required for traceability and other record keeping create such large-scale databases that there is a lag between data collection and data analysis. This can lead to software companies charging huge amounts to customize reporting systems. Picking an analysis and reporting package that meets the company’s demands as delivered is critical to controlling the costs associated with making software changes and upgrades at a later date. In many industries, the statistical expertise an individual might acquire from taking a statistics class, especially one tailored to the industry, can provide new
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employment opportunities for those individuals choosing to climb the employment ladder. The demand for such expertise will accelerate in the next few years as it has in sports, firefighting, healthcare, operations and quality control. As new laws continue to veer towards combining food safety and quality into a more unified and professional approach, the demand for those educated in statistical procedures will increase.
CALIBRATION Measuring device calibration has already been discussed as a critical component of safety systems. Calibration services for devices that measure temperatures, pressures, locations or speeds is a requirement in ISO and the standards discusses in previous chapters. Transporters, maintenance stations and those involved in transportation food safety will be required to establish and maintain device calibration. ISO 22000 will become the established standard for the food safety industry on a worldwide basis. Calibration is a critical component of ISO 22000.
FSMA IMPACT ON THE INTERNATIONAL FOOD SAFETY COMMUNITY New FSMA-proposed rules would require that specified firms have written plans to identify potential hazards, put in place steps to address them, verify that the steps are working, and outline how to correct any problems that arise. The rules propose that each covered facility prepare and implement a written food safety plan that would include the following: hazard analysis risk-based preventive controls monitoring procedures corrective actions verification record keeping. As the FDA and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) publish proposed rules for comment, other countries are quick to take notice and establish local food safety rules that will drive their own food supply chains to comply with the FDA in order to ensure that their own exports are in compliance. Although on the surface the FSMA rules seem to be rather basic from the perspective of food safety and quality, US business and political forces are quick to respond in order to attempt to block, delay or weaken the requirements. Nevertheless, other countries desiring to import food into the United States must comply, because of barriers erected by the US Customs and Border Protection and Department of Homeland Security that were worked out with the FDA as it pursues identical food safety requirements for both domestic and international trade. In Europe, many countries are more progressively pro food safety than the United States in terms of the controls and systems that must be established to l l l l l l
262 The Future protect the public. The nature of international food transportation among neighbors in such close proximity to each other tends to provide an atmosphere where each must protect its own, and this is accomplished to a great degree through acceptance of ISO standards. At this point in time, neither traceability nor FSMA Section 211 (transportation) rules have been published or entered the cycles required for public comment. Both topics will surely lead to heated debate and questions about enforcement. With the FDA unable to enforce either old or new rules with any degree of integrity because of budget shortfalls, the clouds over food safety in the US continue to provide an atmosphere of waiting.
HOMEOSTASIS: ACHIEVING STABILITY IN FOOD TRANSPORTATION PROCESSES Wikipedia defines homeostasis as ‘a process in which the body’s internal environment is kept stable’ [48]. In our case, food transportation is the body and food transportation is the process. The technologies, controls, practices and standards established in previous chapters are all intended to achieve system stability, regardless of transportation sector or type. A breakdown in any process throughout the food supply chain means potential failure for all involved. Establishing and maintaining a certified food transportation stream is critical to the prevention of problems related to health and death for consumers dependent on competent and dedicated quality food processors, producers and the transportation sector on which they depend. Achieving homeostasis depends on transportation and businesses that physically move food choosing to develop policies, procedures and practices dedicated to prevention. While many food and transportation companies are far along in terms of defining and achieving competent controls, most have overlooked or intentionally ignored such needs, regardless of any legal requirements. As other food safety requirements and systems continue to evolve to grow, process and deliver safe food, the transportation sector will be continually challenged to demonstrate competency. The implementation of an overall compliant transportation food safety system takes time, but it can be achieved e one step at a time. The goal of an integrated food safety system that includes transportation processes capable of providing government and business entities with needed visibility and controls still remains. For those unsure of where to start e start somewhere.