Value and tracking: Analysis possible wasteful sector meat by Spanish policy food safety

Abstract

In the last few years, food safety has become a key issue in our society. For this reason, specific regulation have been developed and organizations have been created in order to manage them. Principally, Regulation (EC) 178/ 2002, Art.18, introduces traceability as a technology that allows setting the history of a concrete food, by facilitating its collection from the market in case of crisis. The application of traceability offers many advantages, although, at the same time, higher costs and more resources are necessary to carry it out. This article discusses how traceability adds value to food products. Whether waste is generated according to the principles of the methodology "Lean Management". This research was carried out by means of surveys to Spanish meat companies, and concluded that traceability does increase the value of the product, without generating waste. However, this technique can produce unnecessary processes, bottlenecks and longer periods of waiting on for workers. The economic factor plays a main role for the companies that consider that traceability produces waste The size of the company is a relevant variable in this study, becouse the more critical of the traceability regulations are the smaller companies., They shouls examine their productive systems and restructure them in order to eliminate the perceived waste or, at least, to reduce it.