00:00:12:14 - 00:00:37:15
Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to our last episode of our Food Safety Series. As you may know, we have launched our four-episode series podcasts dedicated to the World Food Safety Day 2023 this week on Tuesday. Our today's topic is about Food Safety Traceability. My name is Refaya Priya and I'm the Global Marketing Specialist for Intertek Business Assurance and Food.
00:00:38:06 - 00:01:09:09
Speaker 1
I'm even more excited today to be joined by one of our inner tech experts. Hanny Widjaja. Hanny has over 16 years of experience in operational risks and supply chain management. Well, Hanny, I'm very excited to have you on our podcast today. Can you tell us? Thank you. Yeah, we welcome. Can you actually share with our listeners like talk briefly about your experience in the industry and also within the company and then the work you have done for the company.
00:01:10:08 - 00:01:42:07
Speaker 2
So show. So thanks for having me on this podcast. It's quite exciting as well. It's a topic that pretty close to me. So it's, it's yeah, it's very exciting. I've been working for a company for 16 years, sounds very long time, but didn't feel like it. I'm joined firstly in London so and finally, you know, while doing a few roles and finally join this exciting team of business assurance and food services in 2015.
00:01:42:07 - 00:02:20:02
Speaker 2
So since then it's. Yeah. It's quite interesting. Different, different things from business improvement to cost effectiveness and done a few premium post-merger acquisitions and activities for Intrinsic as well. We probably are focusing more in the GBL team on like operational risk assessments and mitigations and a few projects in supply chain risk management. And now for the last three or four years, focusing more towards the strategic commercial business development and client management.
00:02:20:10 - 00:02:51:04
Speaker 1
Well, that's awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today to discuss about the topic food supply chain traceability. I'm pretty sure our audience is going to enjoy it as well because this is one of the trending topics at the moment. And and with that, I will get started with the discussion for today's topic. So. Ever growing global supply chains have introduced aspects of food safety that the industry has a significant struggle coping with.
00:02:51:14 - 00:03:10:00
Speaker 1
Brands source of food from all around the world. And it is a monumental undertaking to ensure that food stays fresh up to the brand's quality standards and is free of contaminants tainting all residues. As a business, how do I even begin to face this daunting task?
00:03:10:12 - 00:03:40:14
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah, you're absolutely right there. It sounds quite scary. And I think the consumer is now quite well educated as well. And they know more about what information that they want from, you know, producer suppliers. So and if we've seen, you know, especially as the COVID, the the supply chain becomes even more complex. Same with the pressure to, you know, to be able to trace products for you know, to achieve food safety and quality.
00:03:40:14 - 00:04:07:08
Speaker 2
So that's why we always remind ourselves and also our clients, it's so important for companies to have a robust food traceability system in place. I guess I can share some insights from working with quite a few local and regional companies without mentioning names, obviously, as well as supporting the international brands, because I think they are the leader in this kind of a task of traceability.
00:04:07:10 - 00:04:40:04
Speaker 2
Main challenges typically come from implementing stage and to have an effective traceability system, since it takes so much planning and preparation. So we've seen, you know, typically siloed data, internal oppositions and strict legal regulations in some countries. These are the main obstacles that companies often have to, you know, overcome in in order to achieve the effective traceability. Then we have to look at the criteria.
00:04:40:06 - 00:05:15:12
Speaker 2
Meaning to maximize your food traceability, you need at least the lot. Tracking. I think people familiar with top lot tracking inventory management software that can ideally automate and streamline your inventory processes, helping you manage your inventory more efficiently, of course. One example I can give you, one of our clients, they improve the insights, information they received and made it so much easier for them to spot their sales trend and the ability to track the, you know, recalled products.
00:05:16:13 - 00:05:40:07
Speaker 2
Then the next step is to consider the system, or we call it the technology. Nowadays, everything is all linked to the technology, right? So that's the most you know, you have to find a technology that's suitable in terms of features wise to help you to track and trace. Actually, I think I might need to go back a step here because I think some people probably aware.
00:05:40:11 - 00:06:11:02
Speaker 2
Traceability is commonly seen as, you know, two separate parts. Tracking and tracing. Tracking. It creates a history of your product journey along the food supply chain. And tracking the history also provide information of your products, origins and the movements forward, whether it's a single unit or in batch tracking, however, is your ability to identify the destination of a certain product.
00:06:11:10 - 00:06:50:01
Speaker 2
So example, following your products path up through the food chain from when it was manufactured to the final point of sales or consumption like final consumers, tracking can also follow individual unit or batch. So in summary tracing, looked back at your products that the campaign was tracking looks forward to the finishing point. Now, going back to the considering the system, the ideal system, all technology should be able to capture the entire history of items, the lots and the serial numbers all in one single interface.
00:06:51:01 - 00:07:20:01
Speaker 2
This should allow you to track every transaction from the time your product is being processed or bought to the moment it leaves your warehouse. Or even better if you can track it when it's being sold to the end consumers. But so far, we haven't seen any single system that can do this yet. So yeah, this is why choosing the right traceability system can give you a much greater control and peace of mind when it comes to product tracking and recall emergencies.
00:07:20:13 - 00:07:45:14
Speaker 1
Wow, that was pretty comprehensive, but definitely, yes. A big step back, though. It is. Well, thank you so much for sharing those insights. I'm pretty sure I was very intrigued and I'm pretty sure our listeners are going definitely enjoying our podcast and I'm like, I'm curious. So once we have a traceability program in place, how do we leverage it to ensure food safety?
00:07:45:14 - 00:08:21:06
Speaker 2
So other than the few aspect of this food safety that we mentioned previously, actually from many of our conversation with our clients. Traceability is not just to ensure food safety, it also help them improve the quality and transparency. So that's quite interesting. For many, many years now, we've seen more push towards standardization and chain of custody programs. The most feasible way we say, to demonstrate our commitment to traceability is through a recognized certification program.
00:08:22:08 - 00:08:49:11
Speaker 2
I think a few of you probably agree with this because there's a you know, there's so many such a certification program out there, depending on your products or your supply chain or could be your bias requirements even in some regional country specific certain regulatory requirements. So in fact, some of the most recognized schemes that we offer to our clients today very much depending on complete supply chain approach.
00:08:49:12 - 00:09:17:02
Speaker 2
So typically we have a chat with them to understand how their supply chain works and what is what they think or, you know, based on their best knowledge or experience, where typically the risk lies so that we can understand, you know, which specific certification program that most suitable for for them. It could be a standalone or could be a combination of standards as well, not just certification.
00:09:17:03 - 00:09:44:11
Speaker 2
Typically, we even start from micro testing to all the way to species or GMP testing. And on the certification side, you can talk about, you know, IFMS as the Integrated Food Management System all the way to GFSI or some depending on certain products and it probably suitable to look into Global Gap or MSC ASC COC. So but we have mouthful there.
00:09:46:09 - 00:10:02:13
Speaker 2
This is specifically for fisheries and aquaculture industry and for those clients that in the palm oil products then will probably suggest, you know, our RSPO programs that are more suitable in order to, you know, for them to consider as a traceability transparency program.
00:10:03:04 - 00:10:12:04
Speaker 1
We now know that the information we are getting from our suppliers is fair and accurate. How do we ensure the integrity of what we are seeing?
00:10:13:08 - 00:10:45:03
Speaker 2
We should trust each other right? If they tell us that this is true, that doesn't work that way, unfortunately. So actually, when we look at the food integrity metrics, we probably only end up with a few key elements. The most common one, obviously, the food quality, food safety, food fraud and food defense. All of these must be monitored and controlled to make sure that, you know, to get the integrity of our food chain.
00:10:45:10 - 00:11:13:05
Speaker 2
But how do we go about this? You've probably heard or familiar with a few advanced technologies in the last few years. You know, blockchain is one of them is quite popular even before COVID time. Iot the Internet of Things I used to say it wrongly is a tech of things. This Internet of Things and another one that's quite popular is RFID.
00:11:13:05 - 00:11:50:04
Speaker 2
So radio frequency identification. So that's quite scary words as well. So all this technology, they basically allow food producers or manufacturers to track every single steps of their production process from farm to fork. The aim is simple. It's basically to improve food safety while also increasing efficiency in the food traceability process. And for organizations or companies that are interested in improving the their visibility in their supply chain, they will need to have a reliable and customizable platform.
00:11:50:04 - 00:12:21:12
Speaker 2
I think customizable. Is that the key word here? The platform that can utilize all of their suppliers information, collected information to identify risk to their organization. Without system, without this technology, I think it's going to be a quite big task to to analyze for high risk industries, including food industry. We've seen increasingly, you know, increase in popularity of our it's in Inlight platform.
00:12:22:09 - 00:13:00:12
Speaker 2
This is looking like platform and it's enabling our clients to better understand their supply chain risk. And also the most important objective is to protect their brand. It's it's it's basically a web based platform in light. And it just help them to identify, visualize and manage supply chain risk by leveraging data source from their suppliers. So one of the key or special features of this Inlight platform is it actually cleans their supplier data.
00:13:01:07 - 00:13:54:08
Speaker 2
It's quite interesting because it's also incorporates the unique attributes of their specific products or specific countries. They identify the the tiers of different kind of risk before start profiling and prioritizing the risk of their suppliers. Each of the suppliers will be tagged on, you know, which risk level that the, you know, our clients should, should consider. And it then so verifies the information provided by the supplier, which could be through desktop verification or remote assessments and if necessary, onsite audit the features that our client really, really appreciates and value the most is the analytics and the reporting part, because this allows them to track the trending risk and it will help them to make a
00:13:54:08 - 00:14:09:10
Speaker 2
decision faster preventions and also help them to identify opportunities on how to improve their products or their system and identify proactive, basically data driven approach to manage their supply chain.
00:14:10:11 - 00:14:46:07
Speaker 1
Well, thank you so much, Kenny. These were really pretty cool and great insights. And also now that you mentioned about our platform in Light, I would like to point it out to our listeners. If you need more information about the service that Andy just talked about, the Inlight platform, please do do feel free to reach out to us via email or you can also visit our website Intersect dot com and then search for Inlight it's Inlight - (intertek.com) and you'll be able to fill out a form and someone from our sales team will definitely reach out to you.
00:14:47:12 - 00:14:58:03
Speaker 1
So we are almost to the end of our podcast. I was actually enjoying it throughout like, you know, throughout the podcast. Is there anything else you would like to add before I wrap up?
00:14:59:06 - 00:15:18:15
Speaker 2
Well, I think we cover pretty much everything and we can always go further in sunset than key points, obviously. But yeah, I think traceability is really the hot areas right now along with the sustainability, you know, just to ensure that, you know, the entire supply chains sustain basically in the future, isn't it?
00:15:19:09 - 00:15:23:07
Speaker 1
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, honey.
00:15:23:10 - 00:15:24:02
Speaker 2
Thank you.
00:15:25:01 - 00:15:50:10
Speaker 1
No problem. I definitely enjoyed the podcast and I'm pretty sure our listeners have enjoyed it too. And with this, I conclude our podcast series for the Food Safety Day 2023. Thanks everyone for listening to our last episode of the Food Safety Series, joined by the VP of Business Development of Business Assurance and Food of Intertek Hanny with Jaja.
00:15:51:01 - 00:16:15:10
Speaker 1
In case you missed our other three episodes, please visit the link in the description down below and if you have any questions or would like to speak to one of our experts, please do not hesitate to reach out at business.assurance@intertek.com or follow our social media intertek. Business Assurance and Intertek Agri and Food. LinkedIn and Twitter Pages.
00:16:16:02 - 00:16:29:04
Speaker 1
Thank you so much for joining us today and thank you everyone for listening. Have a great day.
