Combatting Adulteration in the Food Industry with GS1 Standards

Adulteration refers to the deliberate addition of inferior or foreign substances to food products, often for financial gain. This practice poses serious risks to public health, leading to illnesses, allergies, or even fatalities. It also undermines consumer trust and damages brand reputation. In today’s complex food supply chain, traceability and transparency are crucial to ensure food safety. GS1 identification keys provide unique, standardised methods, such as barcodes and RFID tags, as a robust solution to combat food adulteration. By enabling unique identification, accurate tracking, tracing, and verification of food products till point-of-sale, barcodes in food products help ensure integrity and safety across the food supply chain. In this blog, let’s learn the role played by GS1 standards and uncover the benefits that can be achieved.

The Role of GS1 Standards in the Food Industry

GS1 is a global supply chain standards organisation that develops and manages universally accepted supply chain standards. These standards create a common foundation for businesses by enabling unique identification, accurate capture, and automatic sharing of product information. Different products throughout a supply chain are uniquely identified using 12 GS1 ID keys. These ID keys include GTIN (Global Trade Item Number) for retail products, GLN (Global Location Number) for locations, SSCC (Serial Shipping Container Code) for cartons/higher level packaging, GIAI (Global Individual Asset Identifier) for individual assets, GRAI (Global Returnable Asset Identifier) for returnable assets, and more.
When it comes to initiating end-to-end visibility in the food supply chain, barcodes in food products have an imperative role to play. Beginning from the unique identification of raw materials till the final product reaches the end-consumer, the whole supply chain consists of multiple stakeholders, including farmers, wholesalers, distributors, suppliers, and retailers.

Decoding the GS1 ID Keys

Food companies automate data capture by encoding GS1 ID keys in barcodes and ensure products are tracked seamlessly throughout the supply chain. This automated system provides several benefits to companies, such as reduced errors, minimised delays, and improved inventory management, resulting in cost savings for businesses and faster deliveries to customers. As a result, both businesses and consumers benefit from an efficient and reliable food supply chain.

Let’s first look at the 12 GS1 ID keys used in the supply chain and the barcodes used for data capture.

ID Key	Used to Identify
Global Trade Item Number (GTIN)	Products and services
Global Location Number (GLN)	Entities and locations
Serial Shipping Container Code (SSCC)	Logistics units
Global Returnable Asset Identifier (GRAI)	Returnable assets
See more ID keys here

Capture	With
Product Information for Point-of-sale	UPC/EAN
Pallets, Cases, Cartons	ITF-14, GS1-128
Detailed Product Information and Customer Engagement, Coupons	QR Code
Product Data using RFID	EPC-enabled RFID Tags

Application of GS1 Traceability Standards in the Food Industry

Traceability refers to the process of tracing back the complete journey travelled by an item throughout its lifetime. GS1 has developed specific standards to provide the framework for the design and implementation of traceability systems. This ensures that farm-to-fork traceability of food products can be achieved with systems that are interoperable, standardised, structured, transparent, and scalable. Based on these standards, GS1 India provides its DataKart Trace service. Multiple Indian industries have subscribed to this service. It is tailored based on the specific needs and requirements of businesses. They can leverage cutting-edge features of the service to achieve near real-time visibility on goods in transit.

DataKart Trace is also an effective solution to address the problem of food adulteration. When businesses have real-time visibility of their products throughout the supply chain, they can identify problems at the earliest and work collectively with authorities, stakeholders, and consumers to solve them. With DataKart Trace, businesses get answers to the 5Ws - When did the product leave? Where did the product leave from? Where was the product shipped to? Where is the shipment currently located? When did the product arrive? Businesses get the following features when they register for DataKart Trace with GS1 India -

Interoperable traceability system
360-degree reporting view
Integration with ERP/SAP/and other applications
Scalability
All-round support

Benefits of GS1 Standards in the Food Industry

Barcode in food products provide multiple benefits to the food and agriculture industry, especially when it comes to mitigating issues such as food adulteration. Below are some ways these standards help the sector -

Targeted Product Recall: By providing a reliable system to identify, capture, and share product information, GS1 standards help companies comply with food safety regulations like FSSAI’s recall and traceability guidelines. In the event of adulteration, the ability to quickly identify affected product batch(s) helps execute a targeted and timely product recall, minimising harm and protecting consumers from adulterated or substandard products. Through DataKart Trace, businesses can raise recall alerts and notify the concerned authorities to enable a timely and targeted recall procedure.
Sustainability and Waste Reduction: GS1 standards enable businesses to efficiently manage their inventories, reduce waste, and optimise inventory. By fostering better supply chain practices and ensuring that product quality is not compromised, GS1 helps prevent adulteration. Businesses are better able to achieve their sustainability goals since they can fetch updated information on stock status, thus avoiding situations of overstocking and stockouts.
Counterfeit Detection: GS1’s unique product identifiers, such as serialised barcodes and RFID tags, are vital in mitigating counterfeit products in the food supply chain. These standards make it easier to verify product authenticity and ensure that food products are not adulterated or replaced with substandard alternatives, protecting both consumers and brands from fraudulent activities.
Regulatory Compliance: GS1 standards help food producers and retailers comply with various domestic and international regulations concerning food labelling, packaging, and traceability. By ensuring products meet legal requirements, standards reduce the risk of food adulteration as all stakeholders adhere to strict guidelines and provide accurate, verifiable information.
Seamless Data Sharing: The standards provide a standardised and common language for data exchange across the supply chain. This consistency ensures that all stakeholders—from producers to retailers—are on the same page, reducing the chances of miscommunication or errors that could lead to adulteration. By fostering transparency and reducing information gaps, standards support a safer, more reliable food supply chain.
End-to-End Supply Chain Transparency: As discussed before, GS1 standards enable complete traceability of food products from production to consumption. This transparency ensures that every stakeholder has access to accurate, up-to-date information on the product's journey, making it easier to spot any discrepancies or fraudulent activities in the supply chain that could contribute to adulteration.

The Road Ahead - Implementing Blockchain for Advanced Food Traceability

Blockchain traceability is the process of recording all data related to a product’s movement in the supply chain. This technology has a decentralised and immutable nature that helps track and trace products every step of the way. Blockchain traceability is poised to be the next-gen solution to mitigate such malicious practices occurring across supply chains. By providing a transparent and tamper-proof record of the product’s journey, the blockchain traceability solution can efficiently prevent, mitigate, and rectify issues such as adulteration and contamination.

Some examples of blockchain traceability in the food & agriculture sector include blockchain-based traceability of ghee, where GS1 India collaborated with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to ensure each batch of ghee can be traced with distributed pathways and immutable data. and Big Basket’s pilot poultry traceability project to track the complete lifecycle, from chick placement to slaughtering, packaging, and sale via Fresho.

Conclusion

Adulteration is a serious issue which needs immediate and powerful action. The implementation of GS1 standards across the food & agriculture industry will help the concerned stakeholders forge a visible and safer future of food products. This will not only empower consumers by providing immediate and accurate information about products but also will streamline operations and improve the overall operational efficiency.