Onion packing & processing storage and sales quality
Onion packing & processing, boxing, bagging, food service, and inventory QC traceability by farmsoft reduces waste and increases productivity in the onion packing & processing industry. Implement farmsoft onion quality control.
Farmsoft delivers reduced waste in the onion packing traceability & quality control, processing, storage, distribution phases. By enforcing best practices, FIFO, inventory expiry monitoring, and easy stock takes to minimize waste and maximize packing profit. Use bar-code managed inventory, labeling, 3D pallet storage, to help reduce waste. Use farmsoft to process, grade, sort, pack, and value add for any onion type including red onion, white onion, pickle onions, processing onions, brown onion and more.
Onion packing & processing storage and sales quality by farmsoft reduces waste and increases productivity in the onion packing space.
Onion packing & processing storage and sales quality by farmsoft reduces waste and increases productivity in the onion packing space.
ONION PACKING
Conduct recalls in seconds, with full confidence of accuracy and reliability. Minimize risk by ensuring accurate traceability is automatically captured. Pass audits with ease & reduce compliance costs using farmsoft's traceability guidelines. Trace fresh produce up and down the supply chain, over multiple traceability hops. Instantly produce farm records and any other farm traceability records if you optionally use our farm solution.
REDUCE ADMINISTRATION COSTS FOR ONION PACKING
Minimize your administration costs with automatic paperwork generation. Ensure accuracy of paperwork by having necessary documentation (invoice formats, export documents, transport documents etc) automatically generated based on the needs of the specific customer - ensuring timely and accurate documentation. No more rejected orders because of bad documentation accompanying a shipment. Food traceability software made easy!
CONSISTENT QUALITY CONTROL FOR ONION PACKING
Guarantee consistent, accurate, and efficient quality control is performed at any part of the fresh produce handling life-cycle; including during delivery, pre processing, post processing, and dispatch. Create quality control tests based on each customers requirements, and even create a daily factory hygiene test, employee performance tests and more. Accurate quality control helps to improve customer confidence and quality perception. Easily follow fresh produce quality control & fresh produce inventory guidelines.
BETTER PRODUCTION PLANNING & DISPATCH FOR ONION PACKING
Monitor orders, assign orders to specific pack-houses (you can have unlimited processing sites in farmsoft), and allow micro monitoring of each production lines output requirements using dashboards. The dashboards ensure the correct products are produced at the correct time to fill orders. Dispatch teams are given details on their mobile device (or PC/Mac) and scan pallets onto orders. Administration teams can see orders are picked and ready for dispatch, and are presented with the correct documents for printing. All of these features result in improved accuracy of both production and dispatch processes.
OPTIONAL FARM SOFTWARE INTEGRATION FOR FARM TO PLATE MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS
Optionally use farmsoft Farm Management software with our Post Harvest solution. Using both solutions provides an end to end solution from field to plate. Farm Management by farmsoft delivers full farm record keeping, farm inventory, cost monitoring, budgeting, best practice enforcement, and adherence to international farming standards. Use Farm Management by farmsoft to manage your own farms, or even hundreds of external farms that supply your fresh produce company.
Traceability Software Helps Onion Packer Improve Productivity
Inventory management / inventory management systems / onions / traceability / vegetable processor
After installing and using several other systems that claimed to provide complete traceability and product labeling, Rusty McLain, packaging operations manager for Dynamic Conveyors, McLain Farms, Lyons, Ga., came to Dynamic Systems with a wish list. Dynamic Systems, Inc., a Redmond, Wash.-based software developer specializing in traceability systems, was challenged to help the sweet onion grower increase production speed and traceability.
Enter the SIMBA (specialized inventory management with barcode accuracy), a system that solves the problem of how to produce and track complete product and pallet labeling for fresh food on the packing floor. Designed to provide PTI-compliant labels and report packing information from the production line while tracing the product from “field to customer,” there are three modules—SIMBA Mobile, SIMBA Lite and SIMBA Enterprise—that allow customers to start with a simple labeling system, and as the business grows and needs change, move up to the next system.
SIMBA tracks, labels and ships an unlimited number of products and records their specific characteristics (type, size, grade, weight, etc). The system automatically generates bills of lading and verifies shipments, thus eliminating charge-backs. SIMBA also allows the user to track and organize products by pallet, lot and case level, including repeated commingling and re-boxing. Inventory can be tracked by location, tracking moves from warehouse to warehouse, re-packing and commingling products at any point in the process without losing lot traceability.
The system was configured for McLain to use three label printers from one touch-screen on the packing floor. From that screen, they can print the bin label, the case label or the pallet label. A simple touch of the screen determines the contents of the label and how many to print. SIMBA quickly collects production information—lot numbers, product attributes, weight and quantity of cartons packed—and provides inventory and traceability reports.
The label information is then stored in the SIMBA inventory database, which provides data for inventory management, traceability and shipping. The cartons may be accumulated onto a pallet and tracked with a single pallet identifier.
Another feature allows McLain to have the three label printers and one touchscreen on a mobile rolling cart that’s housed on the packing floor and can be moved to whichever production line is active.
At the time of shipping, SIMBA’s van loading feature tracks each carton or pallet onto a specific van. A bill of lading is then produced automatically. This feature not only saves time in the shipping process, but it also eliminates disputes with the customer regarding what was actually shipped.
Key results include increased production speed, the ability to get real-time, accurate production reports, fulfill traceability requirements, provide accurate real-time inventory, print professional-looking carton and pallet labels and expedited van loading.
Onion packing & processing, food service business management software for improved food safety & reduced waste. Onion packing & processing storage and sales quality by farmsoft reduces waste and increases productivity in the onion packing space.
ONION TRACEABILITY / AUDITS / RECALL
As outbreaks of bacterial contamination in produce keep popping up, public confidence is being tested — and so is the effectiveness of traceability, the system designed to quickly recall tainted food from the supply chain.
In recent outbreaks involving recalls of cantaloupes, onions and lettuce, suppliers with traceability in place were able to quickly and precisely identify questionable product and remove it. For suppliers without traceability, the process was lengthy and costly, resulting in the recall of entire crops and increased threat to public health.
“Where traceability is in place, it can be a very effective tool in food safety. It can help limit the scope of recalls and help make them more surgical,” said Robert Whitaker, chief science and technology officer for the Produce Marketing Association.
When traceability is working, growers, packers, shippers and grocery stores can look at a label and quickly identify the product’s source and every place it has been on the distribution chain. Traceability may even have an application at the end of the supply chain, such as retail stores and restaurants, which now rely on suppliers to detect contaminated food.
Industry initiative
The Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI) is a voluntary program that standardizes track-and- trace procedures from farm to store or restaurant. Its backers say the recent outbreaks illustrate the difference between having PTI in place and having little or no traceability capability.
In August, Tanimura and Antle was able to voluntarily recall a single lot of romaine lettuce that may have been contaminated with E. coli. According to a company press release, “Retailers and distributors can identify the affected products through a traceability code label affixed to exterior of the case.”
In July, Gills Onions recalled whole peeled and cut onions and onion/celery mixes after internal testing detected the possibility of listeria contamination. Gills also has a traceability system in place and could identify and recall all product with specific lot numbers. As of August, no illnesses had been reported from the Gills or Tanimura and Antle cases.
“Gills Onions was able to determine exactly who shipped, when and where and do it instantly,” said Ed Treacy, PMA vice president for supply chain efficiencies and a technical consultant to PTI. “They were able to minimize the impact and notify people very quickly.”
Recent cantaloupe outbreaks
The cantaloupe cases involve Burch Equipment LLC of North Carolina and Chamberlain Farms of Indiana. Neither farm appeared to have had a robust traceability program in place, said Whitaker.
Due to possible listeria contamination, Burch had to recall the entire season’s crop of cantaloupes and honeydew melons. According to the FDA, one source of confusion was that a PLU sticker of another grower had been placed on some of the cantaloupes. However, the other grower did not grow or process any of the cantaloupes in question.
The most serious case involves a salmonella outbreak from cantaloupe grown at Chamberlain Farms that sickened at least 178 people in 21 states and was linked to two fatalities. Chamberlain ceased production and recalled its entire crop. The FDA said the cantaloupes in question were marketed between June 21 and Aug. 16.
“If you have a good traceability system, you can be very precise and very clear in your communication,” Whitaker said. “But if don’t have good control over each lot, it causes confusion in these kinds of situations. In the middle of crisis, it is very difficult to go back and do all this. “You have to be prepared before the crisis.”
On the front lines
Traceability systems are designed to stop at the back door of retail stores and restaurants, yet restaurants can be on the front lines of a food safety crisis, said Dennis Keith, founder and CEO of Respro, a Utah food safety consulting firm.
“It would help me in what I do and how I educate people. It would help restaurants be more proactive. If I had a question about a product, I could go right to the source and not rely on going through the supplier,” said Keith.
Restaurants have reason to be proactive because diners are aware of the existence of food safety crises and ask questions about the source of what’s on their plates.
“Most of the clients I work with are local and don’t have that kind of power or ability,” said Keith. “They are relying on the supplier. They contact the supplier and ask whether the recall affects them. The relationship with the supplier is extremely important. There has to be a lot of trust there.”
ONION TRACEABILTY AND BLOCKCHAIN
With the popularity of Blockchain comes grave security-related concerns. Achieving privacy and traceability simultaneously remains an open question. Efforts have been made to address the issues, while they may subject to specific scenarios. This paper studies how to provide a more general solution for this open question. Concretely, we propose Onionchain, featuring a suite of protocols, offering both traceability and privacy. As the term implies, our Onionchain is inspired by Onion routing. We investigate the principles of Onion routing carefully and integrate its mechanism together with Blockchain technology. We advocate the Blockchain community to adopt Onionchain with the regards of privacy and traceability. To this end, a case-study of Onionchain, which runs in the context of Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs), is proposed, providing the community a guideline to follow. Systematic security analysis and extensive experiments are also conducted to validate our secure and cost-effective Onionchain.
Organic Onion Traceability
Orti dei Berici manages all the production phases in first person guaranteeing a precise and complete traceability of the products.
Produce traceability encompasses all the means that allow to track the products from their origin, en route to their destination, throughout the supply chain. In this regard, Orti dei Berici is a leader in its field because it manages all production phases in person.
From the purchase of the seeds or, even better, from the production of its own planting material, to cultivation, harvest, treatment, packaging and storage, Orti dei Berici guarantees its work in all phases; in fact, the phases are carried out and controlled in-house, resulting in a complete and rigid produce traceability.
Onion Food safety
Food safety is a top priority at Groupe Vegco. We take every means possible to ensure we are delivering healthy produce to consumers. In fact, we exceed the safety standards required by the food industry. Each year, our 12 partner growers and our 2 packaging centers successfully pass audits by regulators. Groupe Vegco is certified CanadaGAP and PrimusGFSI.
3 actions to eliminate risk:
Implementation and maintaining of multiple food hygiene measures;
Conforming to sound agricultural practice standards;
Complying with good manufacturing practices in our packaging centers.
Traceability
All onions, carrots and other vegetables produced and distributed by Groupe Vegco can be tracked in real time, from the field to the consumer. This traceability allows us to know precisely what the production conditions of our food are throughout the process.
All of our growers, as well as our packaging, storage and distribution centers are equipped with a DataTrace traceability system. This ensures that we can guarantee compliance with food hygiene standards at every stage.
We also use the services of GS1 Canada in a complementary fashion. Integrating our traceability system with GS1 services allows us to achieve our objectives in terms of food security.
4 ways to ensure the traceability of our vegetables:
>> Using DataTrace software;
>> Certification of our growers and packaging centers;
>> Training of all our employees;
>> Enforcing of strict hygiene measures in our warehouses and plants.
Traceability
Each plot is listed and is given a batch number. It enables the growing, packaging and dispatch processes to be precisely identified in relation to each product.
The batch number, attributed when the potatoes are planted, remains the same until the product is sold.
Producers and the company's staff are involved in this total traceability process. This responsible attitude is key to the products' quality and transparency for the final consumer.
ONION RECALL / OUTBREAK MANAGEMENT
The last few weeks have sounded remarkably familiar to Spring 2020 when we faced a nationwide (and Canada) Salmonella outbreak linked to California grown onions. We are now facing a similar outbreak – smaller at this point (more than 650 vs. more than 1,600 sickened) – but it will be interesting to see if the root cause of the outbreak tracks as the below 2020 case.
Here is what the FDA said in May 2020:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released a report on its investigation of the Salmonella Newport outbreak that caused more than 1,600 reported illnesses in the U.S. and Canada between June and October 2020. The FDA worked with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), state partners, and Canadian officials (Public Health Agency of Canada and Canadian Food Inspection Agency) to investigate the outbreak, which was linked through epidemiology and traceback to whole red onions supplied by Thomson International Inc., headquartered in Bakersfield (Southern San Joaquin Valley) with additional operations in Holtville (Imperial Valley), California.
The outbreak is the largest Salmonella foodborne illness outbreak in over a decade. The report released today includes an overview of the traceback investigation, subsequent on-site interviews, visual observations of the growing fields, and environmental sampling, and various factors that potentially contributed to the contamination of red onions with Salmonella.
Although a conclusive root cause could not be identified, several potential contributing factors to the 2020 Salmonella outbreak linked to red onions were identified. These include:
potentially contaminated sources of irrigation water;
sheep grazing on adjacent land;
signs of animal intrusion, including scat (fecal droppings), and large flocks of birds that may spread contamination; and
food contact surfaces that had not been inspected, maintained, or cleaned as frequently as necessary to protect against the contamination of produce.
In sampling conducted in Holtville, CA, the FDA found Salmonella Newport in 10 water (irrigation, seepage, and drainage) and one sediment subsamples. However, the whole genome sequencing of these samples did not match the outbreak strain.
Although a conclusive root cause could not be identified, several potential contributing factors to the 2020 red onion outbreak were identified, including a leading hypothesis that contaminated irrigation water used in a growing field in Holtville, CA may have led to contamination of the onions.
In light of this report, the FDA encourages all farms to:
assess growing operations to ensure implementation of appropriate science and risk-based preventive measures, including applicable provisions of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Produce Safety Rule and good agricultural practices;
implement industry-led root-cause analyses to determine how the contamination likely occurred when pathogens are identified through pre-harvest or post-harvest testing of produce, or microbiological surveys;
be aware of and consider the risks that may be posed by adjacent and nearby land uses, especially as it relates to the presence of livestock and the interface between farmland, rangeland, irrigation water, and other agricultural areas;
consider additional tools such as pre-harvest and/or post-harvest sampling and testing of products to help inform the risk assessment and clarify the need for specific prevention measures; and
improve traceability by increasing digitization, interoperability and standardization of traceability records; and
follow good agricultural practices to maintain and protect the quality of water sources.
Although the present outbreak appears to be onions grown in Mexico provided nationwide in the United States, and to Canada, though various suppliers in the United States, it will me interesting of we are just seeing history repeat itself.
It also will be interesting if the slow roll out of the FDA “water rule” had an impact in both of the outbreaks?
Here are the compliance dates:
“Larger farms are now required to comply with the agricultural water requirements by January 26, 2022, while small farms have until January 26, 2023 and very small farms until January 26, 2024. This rule does not change the compliance dates for sprout operations.”