Could RFID Have Saved The Eggs?
By Matt Pillar, editor in chief
Last month's massive egg recall did major collateral damage to 13 egg brands, placed 600 egg production facilities under the federal microscope, caused more than 1,500 cases of salmonella, and resulted in the waste of at least half a billion eggs.
Those are just the kinds of numbers that pique the interest of Donal Mac Daid, VP at Aldata. When sweeping consumer product traceability legislation was enacted in Europe in 2005, it was Mac Daid's company that many major European CPG (consumer product goods) manufacturers and retailers turned to for compliance help. That legislation came on the heels of public outcry and fallout from the French Mad Cow Disease epidemic.
Back home, many food safety advocates are pointing at the egg debacle as the most recent in a series of food recalls that illustrate the need for political involvement here as well.
Funny thing is, stateside retailers have the bulk of the technology tools in place today to comply with even the strict European traceability mandate. According to Mac Daid, the missing ingredients are process and discipline. "With the right process in place, product traceability can be achieved using RFID tags and bar codes and preexisting systems that record the movement of products in CPG manufacturing and retail warehouses, DCs, and stores," he says.
If we accept that product recalls are a fact (and indeed a cost) of doing business, we'd better be prepared with a proactive plan to manage them in a way that mitigates that cost and collateral damage to our brands. The current egg recall is exemplary of reaction, which in this case is a symptom of poor traceability. The onus has been placed on the consumer to push potentially dangerous product back up the supply chain because the owners of that supply chain (retailers and egg producers) are ill equipped to pull the product back on their own. They're ill equipped because, as Mac Daid says, they haven't put processes in place to leverage the appropriate systems and technologies to record product movement and respond quickly. "Look at the peanut recall," Mac Daid reminds us. "It went on for three months while consumers checked lot numbers and batch codes and peanut product brands to determine if what they bought could make them sick." Dramatic oversimplification warning: exacerbating a problem that a consumer already holds you at least partially liable for is generally a bad idea.
On the other hand, progressive retailers recognize an opportunity to improve their brand standing in the face of adversity. Target, for example, has successfully improved the perception of its brand during recalls by leveraging POS and customer loyalty data to quickly and proactively alert customers who bought recalled items. Granted this method won't catch everyone who purchased said product, but it will reach your best customers, and when your best customers appreciate your service effort they become even better customers.
To be sure, there are traceability services and solutions on the market that facilitate the integration of the systems required to quickly locate a product at any point in the supply chain. That said, you don't necessarily need to go spend a bunch of money to improve traceability of the products you sell, whether it becomes law for you to do so or not. Chances are, the tools are in your toolbox. You just have to know how to use them.