Tracking and tracing in the food industry: Opportunity and competitiveness advantage analysis

Food Traceability represents a very helpful tool for differentiating companies from their competitors by increasing their competitiveness and market importance. There are many advantages in adopting a traceability system such as, avoiding food adulteration, improving checking systems, guaranteeing levels of quality, increasing health and safety using transparency during the entire process chain. Tracking and tracing not only allow to identify the origin of the food and the ingredients but also to monitor the transport and distribution chain. This is of prime importance lor the safety of consumers, particularly when products are found to be faulty by allowing the specific responsibility to be attributed. Traceability facilitates procedures which create seals of quality that can enhance commercial value. In the food industry, considerable differences exist between Italian and international regulations, therefore it would be advantageous to define internationally shared regulations.