Not yet clear how EU food regulations will impact American producers

Beginning January 1, 2005, Europe's food manufacturers and animal feedstock producers must comply with new traceability legislation. Regulation (EC) No. 178/2002 requires they produce on-demand information about sources and destinations of the products they sell. In other words, they need to know where every batch of every raw ingredient came from, into which products they were incorporated, and to whom those products were sold.

At first sight, it's not radically different from practice in the U.S. But practice within the U.S., say those close to the food industry, stems from general guidelines issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), coupled with additional post 9/11 antiterrorism legislation—the Public Health and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002. In contrast, the European Union legislation is the law, period, and as such, directly affects the not-inconsiderable number of American food companies operating in Europe.

But having laid down the requirement, European lawmakers are vague about the means of ensuring compliance. "The legislation can be interpreted in different ways, and clarity probably will come from case law," says John Gledhill, food & beverage industry application manager at enterprise system vendor Intentia's Uxbridge, U.K.-based British subsidiary.

One example is the precise meaning of "on demand." When required to produce information, just how long have you got to find it? The FDA is clear: four hours for traceability information requested during normal daytime office hours; otherwise eight hours. So far, Europe's interpretation of "on demand" is murky—but the expectation, says Gledhill, is that traceability reports that rely on spreadsheets won't make the grade.

It's also clear that the law is providing incentive for manufacturers to invest in automated data capture and storage systems, though the legislation doesn't mandate this. "There's a huge amount of data that must be captured at point of use and stored," says Steve Baxter, managing director of the Northampton, U.K.-based subsidiary of process ERP vendor Ross Systems. "When corn syrup is added, all the information about that corn syrup must be captured. It's an awful lot of data, and it must be collected in real time."

Some manufacturers have invested in trace engines to organize and retrieve that data—and have discovered that these offer the potential to trace beyond the "one step forward/one step backward" that the legislation calls for. Holland-based Nutreco, for example, has implemented a Web-based traceability system codeveloped in partnership with Intentia. The company farms and processes salmon, poultry, and pork; and manufactures the feed involved. Nutreco can trace the feedstuff that went into individual hams, says Information Manager Kees Bink. "The law doesn't require us to know this information—but we do know it, nevertheless," he says.