The New South Wales Department of Primary Industries is preparing to carry out mock "track and trace" exercises with the state's cherry industry, with the aim of improving not only food safety and biosecurity, but also natural disaster responses.
NSW DPI Development Officer Jessica Fearnley says as part of the CherryPlus Traceability project, the team will conduct playing out different scenarios such as biosecurity incursions, natural disasters and food safety breaches. It will test the ability of the GS1 data standards and traceability solution to quickly identify properties along the supply chain and track items back to individual producers and properties – and it will follow a previous pilot involving potatoes, along similar grounds.
"We did one traceability exercise where we said there was a hypothetical disease on the farm and we had to trace where the product went, right through to the consumer," she said. "The second one, we went in as a consumer and we scanned our barcode which is linked to the FreshChain system and it told us the product was subject to a recall, so we could distribute that recall notice to consumers. Our third one was identifying property, which was easy for us with the FreshChain system because we scan the barcode and it will instantly show up things like where and when it was picked and packed. So, the exciting thing about our research is being able to do these mock track and trace exercises, and I am looking forward to doing it again with the cherries."
Cherry Growers Australia have invested in the project, as this system could provide answers to the challenges around exporting cherries to Asian countries such as China which require an end-point treatment for fruit fly.
"So, they are interested in this system to show that if we don't have fruit fly present throughout the whole system, are these end-point treatments needed," Ms Fearnley said. "If we can get this off the ground and implement data standards to support traceability systems, we might reduce the need for treatments and it will result in better quality fruit heading overseas, and ultimately better prices for the grower. It is only a pilot at the moment, so I want to take this out and get more feedback, so we can get industry insight and come back bigger and better next year."
The project is run by the NSW DPI is in partnership with different stakeholders including FreshChain, GS1 Australia, Food Agility CRC, Woolworths as well as industry and growers, such as Mitolo Family Farms, who were involved in the potato pilot and Cantrill Organic Cherries. She added that it is all about identifying properties and tracking and identifying product along the supply chain, including the ability to trace forward and backwards, in the case of a contamination or food safety issue - as well as manage resources during a disaster.
"If we know that there is a bushfire coming towards the Orange region in New South Wales, for example, we can log onto our systems and see that there are four cherry orchards in the line of the fire and we can use this information to send assistance and resources," Ms Fearnley said. "It is important to prepare, so if in the future, we try to use one of these traceability systems in an emergency we know what to expect. It's only a pilot, but as you can see, we have a lot of stakeholders and partner organisations working together, which has probably never been done before."
There were initially two components of the project that were merged together; one based around disaster management, and the other was the cherry industry's fruit fly management. Ms Fearnley says the importance of property identification and traceability became more apparent after the 2019 NSW Bushfire response, where the DPI struggled to identify properties and where fresh produce was, in order to deploy resources.
"Currently, it's paper-based, ad-hoc, and all reactive," she said. "So, we started the conversation around how we are going to identify plant properties in the supply chain and that snowballed into identifying product in the supply chain. Then we had the other component with the cherry industry, where there were issues stemming from being compromised by Queensland Fruit Fly into export markets. So, we are on strict protocols to make sure that product that goes into the supply chain has no interaction with fruit fly at any point - for example, opening punnets when they are coming into loading docks etc. They turned out to be two similar concepts, so we put them together and created this overall project."
Ms Fearnley says this research involving the cherry industry follows a successful pilot with the potato industry involving Mitolo Family Farms, where supermarket Woolworths had an interest in reducing food waste along the supply chain.
"Stage one involved potatoes and finding out how long product sat in the supply chain and where there were areas where the potatoes went in and out of specification," Ms Fearnley said. "Did they go into environments that were quite warm? How long did they sit at the distribution centres? They wanted to know things like that. Stage two, we are doing a similar thing with cherries, but we will follow the cherries into the domestic market, including into South Australia where there are tight biosecurity protocols in relation to fruit fly, to incorporate the biosecurity and fruit fly restrictions. South Australia has no fruit fly, so when moving product from NSW, we need to show that the product hasn't been tampered with, or compromised, and is still safe to transport with no fruit fly in it."
As well as improving traceability between growers and government departments, Ms Fearnley hopes that it can also improve consumers and help growers get feedback through the barcodes and this interface.
For more information
NSW Department of Primary Industries
Phone: +61 2 6391 3100
www.foodagility.com/research/cherries-plus-traceability