Dairy, deli, and bakery goods should always be good quality. Expired materials in these categories can cause individuals to be sick. To ensure that quality, traceability guidelines, and requirements are set in place for your business, it’s important to educate yourself. More information regarding these guidelines have been outlined in this piece. In this industry, understanding the importance of everyone following the same standards and providing premium dairy, deli, and bakery goods is very important. For a deeper look and explanation of these traceability guidelines for dairy, deli, and bakery items, continue reading the material below. It never hurts to be educated and informed, especially when it comes to your business!
Who Sets These Guidelines?
Depending on the items your business and company is selling depends on what group or organizations sets the guidelines and requirements for your products. For dairy, deli, and bakery goods this organization is known as the International Dairy-Deli-Bakery Association. The International Dairy-Deli-Bakery association allows for global standards to be set regarding these specific products and goods, holding businesses and companies to the same standard.
Not only does this association recommend regulations, they also provide information for businesses on the best practice recommendations, tips for other individuals involved such as distributors and foodservice operators, and suggestions on how to improve the industry overall. The overall goal of the association is to allow for these products to always be high quality.
Information About The Guidelines
All the guidelines not only include “how to” instructions for product identification, but they also include information about batch/lot/coding details. In this industry batch/lot/coding is used for any and all products, allowing them to be traced. The standards that are set regarding the batch/lot/coding of the products allow for all of the information to be the same and readable no matter who is accessing it in the industry. The goal is for all the necessary information to be available and tracked on each product. No product shouldn’t have the necessary information on it. A few specific points regarding the guidelines for dairy, deli, and bakery are identified below.
- Any and all recall information including definitions and principles should be included.
- Batch/Lot/Coding information should include:
- Global Trade Item Number
- Batch/Lot number
- Case serial numbers if applicable.
- Any data encoding and capture recommendations
- Expiration date and manufactured date
- Any other traceability practices facility needs for sale or service.
All these elements are helpful keeping track of items and allowing for the consumers overall safety when purchasing the product. Please keep in mind these aren’t the only elements included in information on the product’s packaging. It’s also important to keep in mind that you should further research the necessary guidelines as not all of them are mentioned in this article. Information regarding this topic can also be found on the U.S. Dairy, Deli, & Bakery Traceability Implementation Guide available on the International Dairy-Deli-Bakery Association website.
Benefits Of These Guidelines
The guidelines and regulations that are set allow for the products to be safe. Your dairy, deli, and bakery items will not only be high quality, but they’ll be safe and secure if they have an expiration date on them as well. Not only will it keep you from selling a bad product, but it’ll eliminate consumers from purchasing a poor product. Expired items can be harmful and hurtful to consumers. If the wrong information or traceability is implemented it could be harmful for other reasons (such as allergens.) Following the guidelines eliminates these issues.
In addition to the safety and secure benefits that these guidelines provide, it also allows for the products to be tracked and traced. Tracking and tracing the products allows for you to have strong data and metrics for your products to help improve and implement new products throughout your business. The more metrics and data that you have on your products for your business, the better.
Best Ways To Implement These Guidelines
There are numerous practices to implement these guidelines in the best way possible. The first and most important is: educate yourself. You don’t want to be in this industry and not know essential guideline information. The association is always looking for ways to grow and improve the system, so continuing education is important. You never want to be ignorant of the guidelines you’re implementing.
Using the proper equipment for implementing the batch/lot/coding elements is also a very important part of implementing the guidelines. It’s simple: if you can’t produce and print the correct barcode or batch number, it’s going to cause problems. Not only will you be unable to trace the product, but the consumer and or retailer selling the item won’t be able to access the correct information about the product. Having a high-quality batch and lot coding printer or equipment is a necessity.
In addition to the traceability guidelines for dairy, deli, and bakery information provided above, the International Dairy-Deli-Bakery Association has other resources for implementing the guidelines including educating and training, as well as addition resources. For more information on these tips, visit their website.
After reading about these guidelines and the importance of them, it’s clear that proper implementation is needed. That’s where we come in to help! Here at Sneed Coding Inc. we can provide you with the best equipment to complete these traceability guidelines, and we can do it while #Keepcodingsimple. We have numerous different sized printers available for purchase that can help you produce the batch/lot/coding you need for your dairy, deli, and bakery items. Visit our website today or call us to speak with a professional. We promise we can help you find the right product for you!
