Source: Tomorrow - RS, 10/07/2009

Imagine buying a barcode orange. When the number is entered on a given website, a series of information will appear about the processes that the fruit went through - from the pre-harvest period, until reaching the consumer's hands. This is nothing more than traceability within everyone's reach, that is, the ability to know what it is, where it came from, and where a certain product is going. Something similar to what happens in George Orwell's 1984 book: in a fictional country, everyone is under state surveillance and is remembered at all times by the phrase “Big Brother is watching you”.

The issue of traceability gained greater status after the “Mad Cow” disease killed more than 150 animals in 1995 in Europe. Now, after other problems, like Avian Influenza and Foot and Mouth Disease, it is more on the rise than ever. To make the traceability concepts reach everyone, four businessmen, partners of PariPassu, a Santa Catarina company specialized in tracking software, decided to write the Green Paper on Tracking - Concepts and Challenges. “We saw the difficulty that people have in understanding basic concepts of traceability”, explains André Donadel, co-author of the work with Thomas Eckschmidt, Giampaolo Busoe and Alex Eckschmidt.

According to Donadel, Vaca Louca gave rise to the “tracking boom” fifteen years ago. Since then, European countries have been implementing modern systems for obtaining information on food products - especially meat - since their origin. As buyers, they have forced exporters around the world to track what they sell. This was the case in Brazil, which implemented, through the Ministry of Agriculture, the Bovine Tracking System (Sisbov) in the late 90s.

The PariPassu partner says that Brazil is not so bad when compared to other nations. Donadel, who participates in discussions on the topic at the Project Management Institute (PMI), an organization that brings together project management experts, says the United States is much more backward. There, the projects being developed will only be implemented in 2012.

Donadel says that the private sector has already started doing homework. As an example, he cites the guidance recently given by the Brazilian Supermarket Association (Abras) so that large retail chains do not buy meat from slaughterhouses that operate in deforestation areas. Result: Wal-Mart, Pão de Açúcar and Carrefour, the three largest in Brazil, have already said they will no longer buy meat from suppliers that harm the environment.