The CDC estimates that each year 1 in 6 Americans or 48 million people get sick from foodborne illness, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die. The joint mission between the food industry, academia, and regulatory agencies is to reduce the number of foodborne illnesses. Digitalization is a critical step in improving food safety, traceability, and quality programs to decrease the room for error.
Many companies are in various phases of digitalization at their companies and are test driving digitalization in areas such as environmental monitoring, process, and sanitation controls, recalls, supplier management, and verification systems. They are seeing benefits in traceability, speed, efficiency, centralized data management, and compliance.
Several open questions remain: What tools exist today and what are missing? How does digitalization actually bridge gaps and how does it work in plants? How does it increase return on investment (ROI) while maintaining regulatory compliance and enhancing the quality of the product?
