These are the Winners of FDA’s Low- or No-Cost Food Traceability Challenge

Recently, the FDA announced the 12 winners of the FDA New Era of Smarter Food Safety Low- or No-Cost Tech-Enabled Traceability Challenge launched as part of the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (COMPETES Act). There were 90 submissions, with the winning teams representing the U.S., Canada, and New Zealand. Submitting teams also hailed from Australia, China, England, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, and Taiwan.

A goal of the FDA’s New Era of Smarter Food Safety initiative is to achieve end-to-end traceability – from source to table – throughout the food safety system. The FDA wants to explore ways to encourage firms to voluntarily adopt tracing technologies and harmonize tracing activities, working toward outcomes that are achievable for all sectors of the system producing human and animal foods.

One of the goals in the New Era of Smarter Food Safety blueprint is to encourage the development of creative financial models that are low- to no-cost solutions, proportional to benefits derived from participating, and enable human and animal food operations of all sizes to participate in a scalable, cost-effective way.