Designing a Conceptual Production Focused and Learning Oriented Food Traceability System

This paper introduces the architecture, operational and organizational structure of a conceptual food traceability system, which facilitates farmer and producer participation into food safety enforced legally by EU and many countries worldwide. Contrary to the existing traditional ERP-integrated traceability systems, proposed conceptual system (c-Trace) suggests a new approach that will combine traceability, informing and learning together since it will be able to provide the required information and learning resources on the food safety standards and application methods such as EUREPGAP and HACCP during on-line data entry into the system. Therefore, our conceptual system will serve as a traceability platform that focuses on primary production and learning with the support of on-line screen tips and relevant learning pages. Since the chain stakeholders and consumers will be able to query the produces sold in the markets via Web-, WAPand/or SMS-based user interfaces c-Trace also provides a desirable transparent traceability for all parties in a food chain at the same time by querying producersand production-related information by consumer directly. The system aims at assisting the transformation of many small and highly fragmented farms from traditional to sustainable agriculture through its architecture that providing relevant applicable information on good agricultural practices and traceability regulations while they record their production details into the system.