Traceability of produce
5:30 am
Thu October 18, 2012

Produce industry struggles to trace food from farm to table

Liberty Fruit Co. in Kansas City, KS, understands the challenges of traceability. It can alert buyers to a recalled product within 24 hours thanks to computerized codes it sticks onto every box. (Abbie Fentress Swanson/Harvest Public Media)

Technology is giving the food industry better tools for detecting problems in the food supply, such as e coli or salmonella contaminations. That’s partly why food recalls have increased in recent years. But quickly finding the source and final destination of unsafe food -- that’s a little more complicated. A recently enacted law requires the produce industry to come up with a system for tracking fruits and vegetables from field to fork, but as Harvest Public Media’s Abbie Fentress Swanson reports, there’s a big holdup.