Product barcode technology can provide a good solution

In an interview with this reporter, MGI executive chairman Miguel said that more than 5 million trades are related to international article coding systems every day, and the International Article Numbering Association has played a very important role in promoting global trade. It is the trend of economic globalization and the broad market application prospects, making its importance more prominent.

"In response to the strong demand for tracking and traceability of food safety in various countries, especially in developed countries, the International Association for Article Numbering believes that the role of effective global bar-coding, a globally-unified marking system, and common business standards, can be achieved through supply chain participants and Relevant users provide value-added services to improve the efficiency of the entire supply chain, and can play a very good role in tracking and tracking food safety. Commodity bar code technology can provide a good solution for this, and we hope that the International Article Numbering Center can This will help global companies, especially Chinese companies, in this regard," Miguel said.

Miguel said that the EAN-UCC system based on commodity bar codes can effectively track and trace the entire process of the food supply chain, and establish a "from farm to table" food supply chain tracking and tracing system. The EAN·UCC system is a globally-unified identity system and a common business language that provides unique identifiers for trade projects, logistics units, assets, locations, and services. It has been widely used in the fields of industry, commerce, transportation, logistics, etc., and has greatly improved the effective management of the supply chain. At present, the EU has successfully implemented food tracking studies on beef, pork, fish, vegetables, and fruits using the EAN•UCC system.

Zhang Chenghai, executive deputy director of the China Article Numbering Center, also pointed out that the use of commodity bar code technology can effectively identify products and their attributes, participants' information, etc. throughout the food supply chain. Conducting food tracking and traceability requirements at each processing point in the food supply chain requires not only the identification of products processed by themselves, but also the collection of identification information already on the processed food ingredients, and identification of all the information in the The processed product is ready for use by the next processor or consumer. This is like an interlocking chain. When any link is broken, the entire chain is disjointed, and the links between the links in the supply chain are relatively weak. This is the biggest issue in tracking and tracing.

It is understood that there are two methods to track the use of bar codes in the specific implementation process: first, tracking from top to bottom, that is, from farms, food raw material suppliers - processors - transporters - vendors - POS sales points, This method is mainly used to find the causes of quality problems, determine the origin and characteristics of the products; the other is to trace back from the bottom up, that is, the foods purchased by the consumers at the POS point of sale have found safety problems and can be turned up The layer is traced and the problem is finally determined. This method is mainly used to recall the problem product.

It is understood that the China Article Numbering Center noted earlier the intentions of the European Union and the United States and made substantial progress in the preliminary studies on the establishment of the system. It has been successfully piloted in Beijing and Shaanxi, and some enterprises in Shandong have exported Japanese and South Korean vegetable product packaging has been attached with a bar code mark with food safety tracking and tracing functions.

Then, how did the small commodity bar code play such a large function? As a result, this reporter conducted a field visit to Beijing Jinwei Furen Halal Food Co., Ltd. slaughterhouse.

"Actually, every cow was tagged with an ear tag during the cultivation period. This ear tag is like a person's identity card and it remains unchanged for the rest of its life. The ear tag contains the province from which the cow came from. City, county, township, village, breeder is the farm name or individual household name, quarantine certificate number and other information. The basic information of each cow is entered into the entrance of the channel, the slaughterhouse and the split workshop on entering the slaughtering program. In the networked computer, the bar code of the slaughtering workshop is printed on the basis of these basic information plus the batch number, the time into the slaughter line, and the traceability number.

"The ideal state is that when consumers buy a piece of beef attached to a supermarket with a bar code with food safety quality tracking and traceability, if one knows where an epidemic has occurred or which company's product does not meet the hygiene standards, it can be By logging into the website on the food label, it can be determined instantly if the beef is from an infected area or an unqualified manufacturer, but the quality of food safety is constrained by many factors, and its formation is a relatively slow process that affects the process. The factors are also uncertain. It also requires the efforts of all parties, especially from the upstream supply of cattle, to the cooperation of downstream beef product distributors,” Yang Yi, deputy chief engineer of Beijing Branch of China Article Numbering Center, told reporters in this way. , "Technically, the application demonstration system for automatic tracing and tracing of beef products has been resolved. The rest is the coordination of the relevant departments in management.

Zhang Chenghai, executive deputy director of the China Article Numbering Center, said that in 2004 China’s foreign trade volume reached US$1.157 trillion, and GDP growth also reached a rapid growth of 8%. After China's accession to the WTO, there will be more food exports to the EU, the United States and other countries and regions. In order to meet the requirements of EU food safety tracking and tracing, to better serve exports, to promote the improvement of China's food quality, to increase the international competitiveness of food, it is imminent to implement food safety tracking and tracing systems for exported food.

However, due to the weak infrastructure of food production and operations in China, the awareness of food production and business operators’ legal consciousness and food hygiene are relatively weak, which leads to the existence of pesticides and veterinary drug residues and pollution in agricultural products and livestock products. Misjudgments such as miscellaneous leave make food safety even worse. The backwardness in the analysis and control of critical points in food production, processing, storage, transportation, and sales has always been a bottleneck restricting food safety. However, the establishment of a food quality safety tracking and traceability system requires that food, feed, processed animal products, processed foods, and feed ingredients, or materials that may become these products, be traced at all stages of production, processing, and distribution. This has added a certain degree of difficulty to the development of this work.

Zhang Chenghai also told reporters that there is no technical problem in using the bar code to implement the system's functions. The specific approach is that at each processing point in the food supply chain, it is necessary to not only identify the products processed by itself, but also collect the existing identification information on the processed food materials, and add all the information marks to the processing. The product is ready for use by the next processor or consumer. This is like an interlocking chain. The key to the problem lies in the interlocking of these links. If one of the links is broken, the entire chain is disjointed, and the links between the various links in the supply chain are relatively weak. This is the biggest problem in implementing tracking and tracing.