Recent developments across the globe have put an increasing focus on food traceability. Complicated supply chains of hundreds of ingredients that are used to make a food product make food-product tracing a daunting task. In an effort to better protect public health from foodborne illness outbreaks and recalls, governments across the world are in the process of implementing new regulations around food traceability.

The Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) announces a new supplement available online through IFT’s peer-reviewed scientific journal, the Journal of Food Science. This supplement is an attempt to catalyze and jump-start the process of achieving a multidisciplinary, cross-functional, whole community approach to food traceability.

The supplement contains peer-reviewed articles on the proceedings of the three traceability research summits conducted by IFT, where 50 subject-matter experts from across the food and technology sectors convened to discuss what traceability means, how it can be pragmatically achieved and why is it important to do so. This set the stage for pre-competitive, multi-stakeholder, cross-sector collaboration in moving the food industry toward improved traceability. To read the Journal of Food Science supplement, visit onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jfds.2013.78.issue-s2/issuetoc