Food traceability and consummers demands: opportunity or threat?

Traceability of agri-food products has come a long way since it first entered common parlance, in terms of fields of application, types of information and the breadth of the field covered. Yesterday a differentiating process, today an indispensable, unavoidable and indisputable element.

Consumers are now demanding that all manufactured and industrial products, especially those in the agri-food sector, be traceable.

So much so that traceability as such is no longer "emphasized", but becomes almost implicit.

At the same time, information and communication technologies have also greatly evolved. We are now in the age of high-speed, connected, even "hyper-connected", everywhere, all the time. We consume information in real time, available all the time. Whether it's true or false isn't always the primary question, as availability and speed sometimes take precedence over precision, or even veracity.

These two trends converge: traceability is the keystone of the information system, and new technologies make it possible to provide users with a wealth of product information... but is it the right information? What are customers' real expectations? In this context, we need to be careful not to confuse data, information and communication.