Traceability is the best way to provide transparency at all stages of a product. It allows us to know the entire history of a product in each segment of its chain and permits us to follow its trail and know its origin.
It provides us greater information at the same time that it demands a huge sense of responsibility, requiring the application of an effective identification system from production to marketing. And beyond that, traceability establishes positive credibility for everyone involved in the production chain and is a valuable business tool to meet today’s market demands.
In the context of organic products, traceability is particularly important as it allows for the verification of organic claims and ensures that organic standards have been followed throughout the supply chain. By tracing the journey of an organic product, consumers and regulators can verify that a product is indeed organic and that it has been produced in accordance with the organic certification standards.
Traceability systems for organic products use unique identifiers, such as barcodes or batch numbers, to track the movement of products through the supply chain. These identifiers are linked to a centralized database that contains information about the product’s origin, production methods, and certification status. This information can be accessed by authorized parties, such as inspectors, auditors, and regulators, to verify that organic standards have been followed and to identify any issues or discrepancies in the supply chain.
The traceability system generally follows these guidelines:
- The certification inspectors collect data on the source of the product: infrastructure of the production site, its size, the identification of the producers, the methods of production and the procedures of harvesting, etc.
- When it comes to the production step, the entire production history is recorded and can be accessed to verify essential information about the product’s path, allowing a quick identification of any failure in the production chain and the promotion of effective recalls, if necessary.
- And finally for the distribution part, each lot receives a unique identification, which helps identify the product’s path, its transportation and route before arriving at its final destination.
Here in Botanik Source, traceability is one of the main pillars of our sourcing system. Working with sustainable supply chains from all over the globe, we maintain and value a healthy relationship with our suppliers, and consider traceability as a main tool to assure the high qualification of the products we have in our catalog, which can be testified by our Organic and Fair for Life certifications that undergo frequent audits.
