Soon, traceability-washing will become a new trend — how can we avoid it?
As more people support environmentally friendly processes in the food production, a growing number of companies commit to green methodologies. But, at the same time, several of them just intend to gain the marketing benefits, without actually implementing these methodologies.
Greenwashing
Many people are already aware of the term “greenwashing”, which refers to
a communication by a company presenting themselves as eco-champions, while in reality their sustainability claims are exaggerated, false, or deceptive.
Their goal is to improve their brand image in the eyes of consumers, without really doing anything.
There were several greenwashing examples by companies, when they advertised themselves as sustainable and eco-friendly, while maintaining, or even increasing the pollution they cause with their production.
Akepa, a digital agency for sustainable brands goes further: they claim that within the fashion industry, nearly 60% of sustainability claims is greenwashing.
Traceability-washing on the rise
Many surveys and reports claim that implementing traceability has the same effect on consumers, as sustainability claims do: they trust traceable products better, and — on longer term — the associated brand’s recognition will grow.
Therefore it’s probable, that faking the existence or scope of traceability will become popular amongst food companies.
Marketing departments will try to fill their reports and announcements with bold statements about their commitment to transparency and traceability, they will emphasize the importance of operational visibility, while in reality, their efforts will not live up to their claims.
There were already a couple cases in the past. A U.S. based food producer announced a turkey traceability program, while the only information they provided was the name of the farm the turkey came from. A large coffee producer’s traceability program was even worse. When consumers scanned the traceability QR code, the well designed landing page provided only general information about the company’s suppliers, supply chain processes, and their commitment towards transparency.
How to characterize traceability
Certainly it’s difficult for a consumer to investigate, if a food producer’s traceability claims are valid or not. The company might decide not to publish the collected traceability information at all, they just use it for internal processes. Or, it might be that they implement traceability for a few marginal products, while using it in for general brand advertisement.
To make it even more difficult, it’s hard to define what amount of information, what depth, and what precision should count as “traceability implementation”. The main characteristics to describe traceability are
- Product scope — refers to how many products, what percentage of all products of a company are traceable.
- Precision — refers to the tracked units in the different supply chain steps, such as LOTs, batches, package, crate, pallet, transportation container. Usually, batch level traceability is adequate.
- Data granularity — refers to the number of data points collected refarding a tracked item (e.g. a batch).
- Depth — refers to how many different roles in the supply chain participate in the data collection (primary producer, processor, shipper, wholesaler, retailer).
These five characteristics could describe the level of traceability implemented by a supply chain.
The SPGD index
If we could set metrics for each characteristics, an index could be built from them, to make traceability measurable, without analyzing each supply chain.
Maybe, there could be other, complementary characteristics as well, like the utilization of standards (G.A.P., GDST, EPCIS, etc.), or the method of data collection (manual, automatic via IOT devices).
By properly setting the metrics of each characteristics, a global index could be built to help retailers and consumers in their decision making. Such index could properly handle traceability washing, and further strenghten the trust in the food industry.
TE-FOOD is the world’s largest publicly accessible, farm-to-table food traceability solution. Started in 2016, it serves 6000+ business customers, and handles 400,000 business transactions each day.
Website: www.te-food.com
