Traceability, Product Recalls, Industry Reputation and Food Safety

Sometimes authorities are unable to identify rapidly the origin of a tainted product. In such cases, recalls or warnings are often applied to all suppliers, which means that the recall applies to suppliers of products that had not contributed to the contamination. One benefit of traceability is to enable more targeted recalls, identifying more specifically the product’s origin. In this article, we show how increased traceability contributes to protect the reputation of industries by potentially limiting the size of product recalls. We also show the relationships between the optimal degree of traceability and the level of food safety with many identical small farms in a competitive industry and for an industry using collective action to set rules and standards.