What the Food Industry Needs to Know About Supply Chain Mapping and Traceability for Due Diligence Laws

A wave of new regulations require companies to perform due diligence on their indirect suppliers. This is especially a challenge for the food industry, as there are often tens of thousands of farms and processors in a single brand’s supply chain. 

The laws are coming fast: by the end of 2024, any company importing soy, beef, coffee, cocoa or palm oil needs to upload a map of all farms to the EU prior to customs clearance. US and EU regulators are both cracking down on food imports suspected of involving forced labor, which extends to other products, including fresh fruit and frozen fish. 

Below are some of the special considerations food companies need to take to implement due diligence across their entire supply chain.

Blending

Large-scale commingling is common in food. That’s tricky for the industry, since both EU and US regulators have made it clear that any production site that could be involved in a company’s supply chain needs to be included in due diligence. Where it isn’t possible to reduce supplier count or implement strict segregation of raw materials, companies need to implement a supply chain mapping solution that can continuously collect detailed and verifiable data on the upstream supply chain, with a special focus on farms and livestock operations.

Certification

Industry has often relied on certifiers to provide assurance of upstream supply chain practices. Some certification schemes include chain of custody documentation, which can be used to validate the supply chain. Due diligence also needs to be performed on conventional (non-certified) and indirectly sourced ingredients. To achieve this, companies should implement an upstream traceability solution to collect and reconcile transaction documents and ensure all volumes are accounted for.

Quality and Safety

A number of initiatives are underway to strengthen upstream food traceability for health and safety purposes, alongside automated portals used to share data between food companies and regulators. Adopting an end-to-end supply chain mapping and traceability platform ensures that food companies will stay compatible as multiple standards converge into an automated data pipeline.