Traceability Case Studies

Mick Tempini
We have approximately over 300 hectares of trees in the ground with a mixture of nectarines, peaches, plums and some avocados.

Frank Frappa
Premier Fresh Australia is one of the largest fresh produce companies in Australia. We've been working together with Cutri Fruit for over five years now. We manage 100% sales of all of their fruit. So whether it's staying domestic or whether it's going overseas, also guidance on what's the customer looking for and how do we continue to grow the category together.

Mick Tempini
To utilise our traceability systems here at Cutri Fruit to make sure that we do produce the highest quality we can.

Mick Tempini
We can utilise systems such as our irrigation system and spray programs to then determine where the fruit has produced the best quality. We're able to then constantly improve for the next season.

Frank Frappa
We can trace it all the way back to the particular block, the day that it was picked, the pickers that picked it, and then all the way through to once it's packed into the pack shed, once it goes to a treatment facility, then put on an airplane or a ship and then over to the destination.

Mick Tempini
In the traceability system, we use bin scanning from barcodes to determine where the fruit’s come from and what block. We also have a digital form where we can collect the quality data of the fruit that's getting picked at the time.

Mick Tempini
Once the fruits get packed, we'll put a label on every single carton which has identification numbers on each carton. We will then put in G.P.S. trackers to see what's happened the whole way through from transit temperatures to treatment facilities to then packing to then even back to the block to the pickers who picked it.

Mick Tempini
The advantage for Cutri Fruit to have a good traceability system is that we... 1. can constantly improve on the previous season. 2. we meet our compliance regulations. 3. we're getting the right fruit to the right place. It just gives us the edge over other businesses.

Voiceover
For more information about traceability, visit agriculture.vic.gov.au/traceability

Mick Tempini
Authorised by the Victorian Government. One Treasury Place Melbourne.

Jessica Loughland
Greenham are a family owned Australian beef processor. We export to more than 25 countries with a large market for us actually being the United States.

Gavin Furness
We are finishers, we purchase off a breeder and we take them through to 700 kilos suitable for the Never Ever Quality Program. When the cattle arrive here, they are all scanned into the true test system. We create an individual page on each animal.

They're actually given a farm number as well, alongside the NLIS number. All the information then is collected... entry weights, purchase dates, purchase price, breeder PIC number, weight gains, health treatments, which then goes right through to the end product.

Jessica Loughland
Traceability is really important to Greenham as a business, it’s absolutely at the heart of everything we do. We are very much in the game of premium beef and we're making quite a number of raising claims on pack and we need the confidence that what we're communicating to our consumer in market reflects how that animal has been raised for the whole of its life.

Gavin Furness
So we like to know that all the cattle have had the health treatments and as they are supposed to be in this system, grass fed antibiotic free. We know what is.

Jessica Loughland
Traceability is also really, really important to our biosecurity. If there is an outbreak of any disease, it allows us to quickly lock down where any animals that's affected may have been and minimise any damage and therefore economic impact of that outbreak.

Gavin Furness
My belief out there is that you can never have enough information either on farm or through the MSA grading systems at Greenhams. It's all a benefit for everybody.

Voiceover
For more information about traceability, visit agriculture.vic.gov.au/traceability Authorised by the Victorian Government. One Treasury Place Melbourne.

Robert Frew
I think traceability in Australian agriculture is.. It's becoming more and more prevalent. Yeah, everyone's got something to sell and if you've got some sort of advantage with the product you're selling, it's got to be a plus for you, for your products.

So, I think traceability is very important. I think it's been driven from overseas customers and domestic customers. And I think everybody in some sort of form wants a bit of information from where their food's coming from.

Marnie Campbell
So tracing animals, sheep, goat or cattle, at an individual level from a place of birth where they're tagged onto a sale yard to another property, onto an abattoir wherever that may be, we can monitor those movements and we can trace an animal for the whole of its life. So the benefits that we have seen as Agriculture Victoria is improved data integrity.

Speaker
Victorian sheep and goat producers are required to identify animals with electronic national livestock identification system ear tags, where processors combine the electronic NLIS tag technology with on-plant technology such as DEXA. Data can be linked to individual animals, this allows for the provision of valuable and targeted feedback to producers.

Robert Frew
So the DEXA system that we've put in is a x-ray scanning system of each individual carcass. What that allows you to be able to do is determine how fat the lamb is, the percentage of fat to bone to meat. So what that basically tells you when you process a lamb, you can make different decisions on whether or not you bone the lamb out or you don't bone it out or you don't over trim it, because it's already lean enough to not be further processed unnecessarily.

Speaker
Livestock are a very valuable commodity, collecting the right data can help improve efficiencies and find savings along the supply chain. Digital information collected along the supply chain can be interpreted by everyone involved.

An effective system can help an industry improve how they detect, track and trace disease and food safety issues, respond to a natural emergency and support export growth. Frew Foods International has invested in internal systems to maximize the benefits of traceability technology.

Robert Frew
The information is fed back to the farmers, it can help them with overfeeding the lambs, feeding them the wrong product and they really don't know that they sell (UNKNOWN) a lamb based on weight they're happy to get the prices they're getting, based on the weight, but if we're not getting the product that we want, then we won't buy the lambs from those certain suppliers.

So if we can feed the information back to them over time, they can improve their systems and improve the product, improve sales, improve the export that just makes everyone's business a lot easier to manage.

Speaker
Victoria implemented electronic NLIS tagging of sheep and goats in 2017.

Robert Frew
We adopted it very early, probably too early, but we're leading the way now and it's good to see these things, you know, opening up and we just need more states to get on board, Victoria's jumped ahead, which is great. And I think the supermarkets domestically are demanding it and export will be something that everybody wants.

Speaker
For more information about traceability, visit agriculture.vic.gov.au/traceability. Authorized by the Victorian Government, 1 Treasury Place Melbourne.

Voiceover
Located in central Victoria, Maryborough is home to a major honey packing facility. Commercial beekeepers and quality assurance experts bring together delicious honey with a uniquely Australian taste. From hive to bottle, every step is crafted by passionate people.

Nicholas Jolley
Hive and Wellness owns several brands of honey here in Australia. Our flagship brand is Capilano. We are Australia's largest honey packer and we source our honey from beekeepers all over Australia.

Jessica Berry
We work with a large majority of Australian commercial beekeepers. We're proud to be able to receive that honey in and to pack it into the Capilano brand.

Ken Gell
I’m the owner of Gels Honey. We run 1200 hives. It's a family business. I’m fourth generation. My son’s involved with it now so there's five generations involved with it.

Don Muir
B-Qual was established to create a set of standards around quality assurance and food handling for the honey industry. We are looking at, from the moment that frame comes out of the hive to when it goes into a jar.

That's our concern and we want to provide the traceability and providence of that honey. We have around about 300 commercial beekeepers that we audit each year.

Don Muir
If you're a packer, we audit you biannually, we audit against your hive records, against the management of your business and the packaging and your food handling, and your quality assurance.

Nicholas Jolley
Traceability is a cornerstone of our food safety requirements here in Australia and also internationally. We are required to be able to track our honey from the final product, back through our blending process and back to the beekeeper. We utilise several different methods to do this and we bring them all together in our beekeeper management system. At any time we can identify honey at any time of the process and by giving us any of those identifiers, we can tell you where the honey has come from and where it's going.

Ken Gell
Traceability is important to our business because we want to make sure our product is safe to the consumer.

Nicholas Jolley
We use a combination of electronic and paper based records. That enables us to trace at any point in the chain where we can find the honey, where it's gone and where it's going to.

Don Muir
We have a very strong control of the product from the moment the frame is taken out of the hive to when it goes into a jar. So we want to create standards that make sure that that process is maintained, it's accredited, and that we've cut out the risks of contamination, the risks of damage to the product in any way, shape or form.

Jessica Berry
The benefits of a traceability program within a beekeeping operation is that you're not only having that food safe certification, but you're also having an opportunity to have better traceability on your hives, where they've been. So it's not just about that food safety, it's also about best management practices and running a successful beekeeping operation.

Nicholas Jolley
We have a strong focus on assisting our beekeepers in getting a quality product to market.

Jessica Berry
Effectively, quality assurance is probably one of the most important things that a producer can adopt into the operation. Traceability, food safety and just critical for a beekeeping business in this day and age.

Voiceover
For more information about traceability, visit agriculture dot victor gov dot EU forward slash traceability.

Nicholas Jolley
Authorised by the Victorian Government. One Treasury Place Melbourne.