ISO/IEC approves farm-to-fork traceability standard

Two supply chain visibility standards that enable farm-to-fork traceability have been approved as international standards by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).

GS1’s Electronic Product Code Information Services (EPCIS) is an open standard which allows businesses to capture and share information about the movement and status — the what, where, when and why — of products, logistics units and other assets in the supply chain. Its companion standard, the Core Business Vocabulary (CBV), defines a standardised vocabulary, ensuring that all trading partners exchanging supply chain visibility data have a common and consistent understanding of the business meaning of that information.

Mark Fuller, GS1 Australia’s chief operating officer said the standards enable trading partners to share information about the physical movement and status of products as they travel throughout the supply chain, streamline the ability to track and trace products, and meet consumer and regulatory demands for accurate and detailed product information.

Initially published in 2007, EPCIS is deployed in sectors such as transport and logistics and fresh foods to expand visibility and improve efficiency in areas ranging from inventory management to consumer safety. The versatility of EPCIS has helped drive adoption of the standard, which allows for industry-specific enhancements and can be implemented with a number of different data carriers, including GS1 barcodes and EPC/RFID tags.

The ability to capture information about the transformation of meat, fish, produce and upstream ingredients makes EPCIS an enabler of farm-to-fork traceability. The standard can also be leveraged to reduce opportunities for undetected manipulation or counterfeiting of pharmaceutical products.

The new ISO/IEC international designation will enable government agencies and regulated sectors to reference the standard. It also reinforces the implementation of the standard in commercial software solutions and hence its deployment across multiple sectors.