Study of traceability and recall plans of food processing plants and small medium enterprise (SMEs) in Sungai Petani, Kedah.

Currently the food safety has been the main issue of the customers' concerns, industries and government policies. Therefore, this study examines traceability and recall plan in the plant processing and small medium enterprises (SMEs) in Sungai Petani, Kedah. Traceability is the process of tracking the flow of product through a supply chain. There are two types of traceability which are internal and external traceability. Traceability involves tracking and tracing activities. Malaysia had launched Malaysia Food Information and Traceability System since 2005 but the information are not published and rarely known. The objectives of the study for a food traceability system is to determine the level of traceability (internal and external) in the food processing plants, to examine the traceability method used and to document the constraints faced and benefits of traceability to the companies. To know the current situation of traceability system, a survey was conducted to 80 participants from processing plants and SMEs. Based on the survey, only 27.5% respondents knows about traceability and only 31.2% implemented and plan to implement traceability system. The reasons why participants did not know about traceability were because they had never heard of it, no time, no training and bring no benefits to them. Hence, by this study, we can determine effectiveness of traceability and examine what is the traceability used by the processing plants/SMEs. Most of the processing plants/SMEs used paper document and barcode as traceability method. However, there are some difficulties faced and benefits for implementing traceability in the industries. The difficulties faced by the companies for implementing traceability include cost, problem to get external funding to support traceability system, lack of qualified staff because of lack of education and training in traceability system and change to the production process needed if traceability were implemented. The outcomes of this study will provide information and awareness regarding the traceability system for the food processing plants/SMEs and other stakeholders in future.