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Across industries there are regulations and compliance requirements to manage the distribution of information alongside their products in order to keep end-consumers safe.

It’s why chain of custody and all of its critical components matter, especially traceability- which includes how products are labeled and the information that those labels include.

Specifically, with the food industry (from producers, to processors, to manufacturers and service providers) key players face increasingly complex standards for food labeling and traceability globally. The CDC reports that in the United States more than 128,000 people are hospitalized every year resulting from food-borne illness. 3,000 die.

Related to these grim statistics are issues with food labelling errors. Half of the FDA recalls are because undeclared allergens. With this as the bleak reality, 

it’s no surprise that 80% of small- to mid-sized businesses fail within three years of a product recall due to the loss of sales, reputation and resulting loss in market value.

What can be done? How do companies approach their traceability, especially as it pertains to more accurate labeling? You invest in the right solution and that solution is BarTender®, a barcode and label software. BarTender is a tested, trusted, and secure labeling and tracking program that can address these concerns.

“BarTender is the difference between a successful labeling system that simplifies the supply chain and a complicated one that creates costs.”

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CENTRALIZATION

BarTender offers centralized and secure control of your food labeling process. Without centralization and security measures, you have several places for files/data to live with several people having access and ability to amend or change the information; save it to the wrong location; and then must remember where they put the latest file.

With this much versioning, locations for document storage, and human interaction there is an increased likelihood of error and decreased reliability in the accuracy of information being produced for a label. This, in turn, impacts the quality of the trace when ‘said thing’ gets recalled and needs to be tracked back through the chain.

A centralized system eliminates the multiplication of label formats occurring from label duplication and sharing, while also ensuring you are always using the right label with the right data. When you store your labels in one place where they can be accessed throughout the organization— a strategy called “single-source-of-label”— you can make changes to the central data source and automatically push them down the entire enterprise instantly. “Centralized control also enables a complete audit trail by defining user roles and allowing only designated users to ‘check out’ and ‘check in’ labels, alter designs, edit data, or print labels.” Thus, the risk of unauthorized label changes is reduced. By including a version management system, you can undo any unauthorized or errant changes and return to a previous, correct version. If you want to know even more about BarTender’s centralization and labeling this is the best resource.

INTEGRATION

It’s important that your enterprise’s labeling software offers simple, direct and seamless integrations. Why? Seamless system integration with centralized and accurate data tightens traceability and improves quality and accuracy of the data provided on labels. The good news: BarTender integrates with ERP systems like Oracle, SAP, IBM Websphere, Epicor and HighJump enabling improved supply chain management, while at the same time satisfying regulatory requirements. It provides a flawless connection between your ERP system and your label printer, whether its a single mobile printer in the field or a network of thousands of printers at facilities around the world.

Better yet, it can initiate printing automatically when “trigger” events occur – such as, sending/receiving web services, a saved file, or modification made to records within a database table or view. BarTender also connects to and communicates with clients via TCP/IP, UDP or HTTP and performs basic file operations (like move, rename, delete or copy).

LABELING

BarTender is unmatched in its versatility and control over label design and automation. Among its features are sample labels designed specifically for the needs of the food industry. These include a selection of pre-formatted sample compliance label templates. There are features built in to manage your compliance labeling, prime labeling, supply chain labeling, and weight scale labeling.

BarTender’s automatic ingredient list formatting meets EU regulation No. 1169’s (allergen labeling requirements). And there is a produce traceability label template built to Walmart specifications. This includes automated Voice Pick Code generation which enables regulatory compliance. Most importantly, BaTender’s security features include comprehensive audit trail capture. What does this mean for you? A super quick response time during recalls or site inspections.

Invest, trust and rely in a solution that will meet regulations and requirements and improve your food traceability and your labels.

BarTender will centralize your data and integrate your systems which will impact your effectiveness and accuracy of track-and-trace. As a result, there will be a reduced possibility of inaccurate labels and decreased costs associated with errors. Not to mention you’re limiting the risk to your reputation caused by those instances. Get in touch with us today so we can help you invest in the right solution to improve your traceability, your labels, and therefore, your entire enterprise.