Multi Supplier Traceability

The Hotel I work for, has various suppliers for almost all perishables, who supply one a daily basis.

Suppose there are three suppliers for fresh prawns, all the prawns are processed simultaneously in the butchery and then despatched to the user departments for consumption. It is not possible to give prawns to one department from only one supplier. Because there is a high demand of prawns... and one supplier cannot provide the entire lot on a daily basis.

How do I put a traceability system in place?

If the quality of all the prawns received is checked thoroughly as per standards... do we still have to have a traceability system for prawns.

Has anyone put in a system in place to tackle a situation like this. Please assist.

Can anybody help Wildpepper?

Hello Wildpepper,

Try to adopt a system that is similar to the system used in Ireland for beef traceability in minced meat that has been produced from more than one animal: keeping the number of suppliers in every batch of mixed product as small as possible, make your batch of mixed product traceable to a group of suppliers. That way, if you need to trace the source of the prawns, at least you only have to go back to a small subset of your suppliers to verify their systems or if suppliers alert you of difficulties you only have to quarantine the batches of product that contain prawns from the relevant supplier.
Another alternative: supply each department several times a day with small quantities of product, assign separate batch numbers to each delivery and mix product from different suppliers only, if absolutely unavoidable to make up quantities. The information that needs to be recorded in the butchery would include quantity and time delivered to the department as well as supplier information and the product from different suppliers would have to be processed and stored separately. If the receiving department has a log of all product they prepared with the corresponding lot numbers, you should be able to trace the origin of the majority of prawns right through to the final consumer.


Hope this helps

Matt