CASE STUDY
Scotland’s Rural College
Assuring the Provenance, Safety and Quality of Food & Drink Products
About SRUC
Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) is a higher education, consulting and research institution focused on agriculture and life sciences.
The institution has a consulting division, SAC Consulting, which works with clients in rural businesses and associated industries and it also has a research division which carries out research in the agriculture and rural sector.
Problem
Permitted gluten levels in the UK are 20 parts per million but in the rest of the world it’s five or less, and UK levels can trigger an auto-immune response in people with Coeliac disease or severe gluten allergies. Consumers who require gluten-free products need assurances that what they’re buying is safe for them.
Growing concerns over food and drink safety, authenticity and sustainability mean that consumers, retailers, producers and processors require transparent evidence about the lifecycle of products. Many farmers are already recording various quality controls at field level, from shed-cleaning to crop-spraying and harvesting, but this is often only on paper which is a time-consuming and outdated method.
For consumers who may be allergic or intolerant to some foods, they need assurance that what they are buying is safe for them. With the rate of food intolerances increasing in the UK, a viable solution is needed to provide evidence of this assurance.
Solution
The SICCAR platform provides complete supply chain traceability. SICCAR enables consumers to trace the provenance of their oats back along the supply chain, track how they have been processed, and be completely sure they are gluten-free. This evidence can be accessed via a QR code on the packaging, which can be scanned to see a whole dashboard of publicly available information, proving the oats’ journey from farm to fork.
The solution enables multiple parties producing, verifying and assuring foods to add data about the product throughout its lifecycle. Trusted parties add data to a shared but secure register, in a controlled and compliant way. All the producers and processers involved in a food product’s lifecycle can add and access data according to the permissions they have been granted. Some data can be given permission to be public, to maintain supply chain transparency.
Not only does this solution provide transparency to consumers, but it tilts some power in the supply chain back to the producers, as they are able to evidence the quality of their processes.
Benefits
- Traceability of oats throughout the supply chain
- Producers can easily evidence the quality of their processes and products
- Complete transparency for consumers into the history of a food product
- Increases brand value
With this solution food and drink producers can offer consumers absolute assurance, and maintain the premium for certified gluten-free oats.
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