Traceability Systems in the Agri-Food Sector: a Functional Analysis

Since January 1 2005, traceability has become mandatory to food operators especially within the European Union. In this context, agrifood companies are obliged to be equipped with systems able to reconstruct the history of the products they handle. A large state-of-the-art has then been achieved on traceability systems which revealed that few attempts tried to characterize a complete set of functional expectations and quality indicators. Our present contribution consists in applying some principles of the functional analysis method in order to provide an evaluation framework under the form of functions and measurable indicators so as to assess, monitor and improve food traceability systems.