The importance of transformations for traceability - A case study of lamb and lamb products

Vertical product information flow is important with regard to consumers' perceptions of the meat which they buy. When research and analysis of traceability is carried out it is often found that critical points where information is systematically lost are encountered in the transformations of the resources. This study describes how lamb meat can be both tracked and traced through a lamb meat producer (company A). At company A 60% of the resource transformations were shown to be additions, mixing and splitting, these are considered to be those which produce the most critical traceability points. After an analysis of the current traceability system at company A suggested improvements were made. With regard to granularity of traceability they cannot trace individual animals during production, but rather a set of animals. The smallest traceable resource unit (TRU) company A can trace back to be a set of (identifiable) animals from one specific farm. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.