Management Practice Insights
DOI: 10.59571/mpi.v3i1.6
Year: 2025, Volume: 3, Issue: 1, Pages: 32-37
Original Article
Akansha Misra 1
1 Assistant Professor, Operations Supply Chain Management and Quantitative Methods at SPJIMR.
Correspondence
Received Date:21 August 2024, Accepted Date:06 March 2025, Published Date:31 March 2025
Problem of Practice:
Contamination poses a significant threat to food supply chains, leading to public health crises, costly recalls, food waste and damage to brand reputation. Traceability technology offers a potential solution by allowing companies to identify the source of contamination and respond effectively, thus minimising financial losses. However, its success hinges on widespread adoption across the entire food supply network. A study by Lingxiu Dong and team highlights the challenge posed by opportunistic behaviours among supply chain members, which can undermine the advantages of traceability.1 For instance, if retailers notice wholesalers saving costs through traceability, they might demand lower wholesale prices, which could deter wholesalers from adopting the technology. What strategies can procurement and supply chain managers implement to counter these opportunistic behaviours in the food supply chain? The research suggests a simple contractual mechanism to help procurement managers effectively adopt traceability technology
1 Lingxiu Dong, Puping (Phil) Jiang, and Fasheng Xu, “Impact of Traceability Technology Adoption in Food Supply Chain Networks,” Management Science 69, no. 3 (2023), https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4440
2 Dave Fields, “Massive Vegetable Recall At Walmart In New York,” The New 96.1 (blog), July 26, 2024, https://thenew961.com/vegetable-recall-walmart-newyork/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral.
3 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “2018 E. Coli Outbreak Linked to Romaine Lettuce A,” 2018, https://archive.cdc.gov/www_cdc_gov/ecoli/2018/o157h7-0418/index.html.
4 NBC News, “Peanut Industry: Recall Price Tag $1 Billion,” March 11, 2009, https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna29634279.
5 “Food manufacturing and the true cost of product recalls”, Traceone, February 7, 2023, https://www.traceone.com/resources/plm-complianceblog/food-manufacturing-and-the-true-cost-of-productrecalls#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Grocery%20Manufact urers,disposal%20of%20the%20tainted%20product.
6 World Economic Forum, “Innovation with a Purpose: Improving Traceability in Food Value Chains through Technology Innovations,” 2019, https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Traceability_in_food_v alue_chains_Digital.pdf.
7 Matt High, “Supply Chain Insight: Inside IBM's Food Trust Blockchain System,” 2020, https://supplychaindigital.com/technology/supply-chaininsight-inside-ibms-food-trust-blockchain-system.
8 “How Walmart Brought Unprecedented Transparency to the Food Supply Chain with Hyperledger Fabric,” LF Decentralized Trust (blog), n.d., https://www.lfdecentralizedtrust.org/casestudies/walmart-case-study.
9 IBM, “Majid Al Futtaim Taps IBM Food Trust to Deliver Food Traceability Across Carrefour Stores Using Blockchain Technology,” February 22, 2021, https://newsroom.ibm.com/2021-02-22-Majid-Al-Futtaim-TapsIBM-Food-Trust-to-Deliver-Food-Traceability-Across-CarrefourStores-Using-Blockchain-Technology.
10 MarketsandMarkets, “Food Traceability Market Size, Share, Industry Growth, Trends Report (Technology & Software) by Technology Type (RFID, Barcodes, Infrared, Biometrics, GPS), Software Type (ERP, LIMS, Warehouse), Software End User, Technology Application and Region - Global Forecast to 2025,” n.d., https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/foodtraceability-market-103288069.html.
11 California Giant Berry Farm, “California Giant Berry Farm's Inaugural Sustainability Report for 2023,” n.d., https://www.calgiant.com/wpcontent/uploads/2024/06/California-Giant-Impact-Report2023-Final.pdf
12 TraceX, “Traceability in the Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chain,” March 15, 2024, https://tracextech.com/traceability-in-the-fruitand-vegetable-supplychain/#:~:text=Compliance%20Management%2DThe%20softwar e%20helps%20farmers%20adhere%20to,ensuring%20compliance %20at%20every%20stage%20of%20production.
13 Shalini Unnikrishnan et al., “The Time Is Ripe for Food Traceability,” Boston Consulting Group (BCG) (blog), August 4, 2021, https://www.bcg.com/publications/2021/food-traceability.
14 Isabelle Bousquette, “Blockchain Fails to Gain Traction in the Enterprise”, The Wall Street Journal, December 15, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/blockchain-fails-to-gaintraction-in-the-enterprise-11671057528.
15 PYMNTS, “Walmart Puts Pricey Blockchain Food Tracking Platform On Ice,” December 19, 2022, https://www.pymnts.com/blockchain/2022/walmart-putspricey-blockchain-food-tracking-platform-on-ice/.
16 Ian Quinn, “Does Tesco's reset demand too much of suppliers?”, The Grocer, July 24, 2023, https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/analysis-and-features/doestescos-fit-for-growth-reset-demand-too-much-ofsuppliers/681441.article#:~:text=Tesco%20cites%20a%2050,to%2 0help%20it%20drop%20prices.
17 Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission, “Pass-Through of Unfair Trading Practices in EU Food Supply Chains,” 2020, https://www.sipotra.it/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Pass-Through-of-Unfair-TradingPractices-in-EU-Food-Supply-Chains.pdf.
18 The World Bank, “Digital Technology for Traceability in Vietnam's Fruit and Vegetable Value Chains,” December 2022, https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/09972431018233 0688/pdf/IDU03bd6b7680aa0804d260a4120c0c008620286.pdf.
19 François Mosnier, “How Retailers Can Be Sustainable and Profitable in Seafood” (Planet Tracker, n.d.), https://planettracker.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Carrefourreport.pdf .
20 Srivatsa Sreenivasarao and Allison Voss, “The EU Has Delayed Measures on Deforestation-Free Products. But Business Can Start Today,” World Economic Forum (blog), February 2025, https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/02/deforestationcompliance-business/.
21 Mona Haji et al., “Critical Success Factors and Traceability Technologies for Establishing a Safe Pharmaceutical Supply Chain,” Methods and Protocols 4, no. 4 (November 2021), https://doi.org/10.3390/mps4040085.
22 Rohit Dev Sethi, “Traceability in the Textile Supply Chain: Ensuring Transparency from Source to Shelf,” Textile Focus, October 23, 2024, https://textilefocus.com/traceability-in-thetextile-supply-chain-ensuring-transparency-from-source-toshelf/.
© 2025 Published by SPJIMR. This is an open-access article under the CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
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