Recalls in food chains: how can information technologies contribute to avoid them?

Abstract

Food supply chains are becoming increasingly complex and vulnerable to risks that can cause product quality failures and, consequently, result in a recall incident. Product recalls have significant negative effects for industries, their suppliers and clients, which can threaten consumer's healthy, adversely affect company performance, reduce the brand value, result in lost revenue and market share, in addition to changing consumer demand and futures prices. Since recalls are usually the result of different sources, it is necessary to use risk mitigation in the chain to minimize possible recalls in the food industry. The objective of this research is to analyze the different roles of information technologies (ITs) and stakeholders in the process of mitigating risks in food recall events. For this, this project includes two master's dissertations and a scientific initiation. Master's project 1 aims to analyze how risk mitigation can contribute to reducing risks that generate recalls in food industries. As a result, it is intended to generate a framework containing risk factors and specific actions, defining how the main stakeholders can contribute to mitigate the occurrence of recall. Master's project 2 aims to analyze how information technologies can help in identifying the causes of recall. At the end of this, a flow of collection of information link by link will be proposed, as well as in the chain as a whole, with a view to mitigating causes of the occurrence of recall and desirable actions. The scientific initiation project will comprise a systematic review that will characterize the contribution of traceability to the identification of risks in food recall. Content analysis will be used in all works, with the aid of the QDA miner software. At the end of this project, it is intended to define a set of risk mitigation actions and the role of different stakeholders. (AU)