The challenges of food distribution management include:
- Limited shelf lives of food products
- Requirements with regard to temperature and humidity
- Possible interaction effects between products
- Time windows for delivering the products
- High customer expectations
- Low profit margins
Temperature control is an important characteristic of many food distribution systems. It ensures a control on food quality and food safety. However, since temperature control requires high energy consumption, the sustainability objective also requires adequate attention in food distribution systems. . Temperature control can basically be categorized into: frozen, chilled and ambient. For the frozen and chilled chain, a number of different temperatures are used. The frozen chain mainly operates at −18 degrees Celsius, although a product like ice cream requires a frozen chain with an even lower temperature of −25 degrees Celsius. For the chilled chain, temperatures range from 0 degree Celsius for fresh fish to 15 degrees Celsius for, e.g., potatoes and bananas.
Food Safety
Food safety requires careful attention since any failure of food safety requirement has both legal and economic consequences. Food safety requirements have been enforced by means of several legislations. The economic implications of food safety failure could include product recalls, damage to reputation and punitive liability damages.A well-known example of such a food safety crisis is the recent recall of peanutbutter in the USA due to the presence of salmonella. It was the largest product recallever in the history of the country, involving more than 200 food manufacturers downstreamin the supply chain—in total recalling more than 2100 products. In addition to such well-known large recalls, it has been shown that there are also avery large number of recalls of smaller scale, which in some cases still lead to seriousillness or death.
Various systems and standards have been developedover the past decades to ensure food safety. The best-known are the hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP) system, the ISO 22000 standard and the British Retail Consortium (BRC) standards. Systems like HACCP are developedto manage food safety, based on risk management principles and cover a rangeof biological, chemical and physical hazards. The basic idea behind a HACCP systemis to provide a structured way to identify food safety risks and reduce or eliminatethese. Standards like ISO 22000 and BRC normally include HACCP aspects, but alsoprovide a management system to incorporate food safety in an organization.Although HACCP development is currently quite widespread in large food manufacturers,its use is limited within smaller businesses, especially in the foodservicesector. It should, however, be noted that there have recently been activitiesto improve this situation by developing (and validating) an alternative food safetymanagement system that is tailored to the foodservice sector. In addition, governments are imposing legislations that enforce traceability of foodproducts during all stages of production, processing and distribution. Despite the importance of traceability, the reality isthat in complex, interconnected food supply chains, complete traceability is more theexception than the rule.
Food Quality
Food quality refers to the physical properties of food products as well as the quality of the food as perceived by consumers. Hence, it covers the microbial aspects as well as the texture or flavor. Quality assurance by means of certification and auditingis increasingly becoming important in the process of production and distribution. This is leading the way for technological innovations in terms of time-temperature integrators or indicators to improve temperature monitoring throughout the distribution system and tie enhance shelf life estimation with a chain perspective.
Sustainability
Sustainability in food supply chains include cost-based performance measures, environmental aspects as well as a social dimension. This entails, for instance employees’ health and safety, ethical trading in procurement of rawmaterials, and animal welfare. For example, fair trade initiatives have been developedto improve the position of food producers in developing countries.The business practices of retailers and caterers have a direct impact on sustainability, mainly in terms of temperature control and distribution. Sourcing sustainable products from food manufacturers is also an important requirement and it relatesto waste and refrigeration related to storage, and foodservice operations during preparation and service. Another well-known concept in relation to the sourcing and the sustainability of food chains is that of labeling, for example in the form of food miles, which relate to the distance a food product has travelled to get to the consumer. Although this only partially reflects the carbon footprint or even total environmental impact of the production and distribution system, the concept has become relatively popular. It should be noted that any assessment of sustainability must be made for the supply chain as a whole. Benefits of local products in terms of food miles may be lost through a production and or storage stage with a higher environmental burden. This evaluation may also depend on whether a product is ‘in season’ or not, as this may have a large impact on the energy usage during storage.
The environmental dimension of sustainability has probably received the most attention. One of the best-known examples is Life Cycle Assessment, an analytical tool that helps in assessing a product’s environmental impact from product development to consumption. Although these assessments can be and are used to decrease the environmental load of products, further standardization is still needed to improve comparative studies and to broaden practical applications in the food sector.
The social dimension has received less attention.Numerous companies have started to work on these issues under the label ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ (CSR). In many cases they also communicate their CSR performance to stakeholders like employees or customers. For instance, all ten major retailers in the UK have stated that they see CSR as an integral element of theirbusiness environment, although there are substantial variations in the nature and extent of the CSR information they provide. Recent work has, however,provided some guidelines on how to approach this with a combination of methodologiesto eventually be able to combine all three dimensions. Also, there are several developments towards a ‘social LCA’, which is supposed to supplement the existing LCA methodologies and as such work towards a methodology that would address all dimensions of sustainability.
Promoting social and environmental awareness can also be beneficial for a corporate image, and in some occasions it might lead to cost savings at the same time, for instance while reducing food waste.
Interdependence between quality, safety, and sustainability
The fact that food distribution deals with products that are eventually meant for human consumption results in a strong focus on food quality and food safety. This is especially true for products that do not undergo extensive shelf-life-extending treatments and remain ‘fresh products’ with short shelf lives. Both quality and safety are based on changes in the food product. The main difference being that food quality is based on a more continuous process of degradation, whereas safety is mostly assessed in terms of either a product fulfills safety requirements or it does not. However, underlying is often a continuous process related to, e.g., the growth of a certain bacteria.
Product changes are often reduced by temperature-controlled storage and distribution, which, however, normally require a significant amount of energy, thereby negatively affecting the environmental impact of the products. Cold storage and distribution sector is facing challenges pertaining to environmental concerns and increasing electricity costs. Not only new technological solutions should be developed, but also theuse of existing machinery and processes should be optimized.
Nowadays, systems that are originally designed to control food safety (like HACCP) are also used to increase the product quality throughout the supply chain. This also concerns nutritional quality, as can for instance be seen in the recent development of the nutritional control points (NCP) concept. This is based on the HACCP system, and can be used to identify the critical points in production and distribution systems related to nutritional product changes and eventually help to increase nutritional quality. Extending these quality and safety control systems into transparent food chains that are able to supply affordable food with high quality and diversity are some of the challenges related to the sustainability of the food industry.
The challenge for the industry is to extend responsibility for product quality into social and environmental performance of food supply chains. Existing technology can be designed for enhancing thetransparency of food supply chains such as the safety focused traceability systems can be expanded to also help to improve sustainability.
Furthermore, food distribution is rapidly moving towards globally inter-connected systems with a variety of relationships. This means that products are sourced from markets all over the world, leading to a focus on quality preservation, and at the same time cost-effectiveness.
In light of sustainability, wasted product is also an important performance measure. In general, food products that are not ending up being consumed have had a significant environmental impact without adding value. Partly, this is due to food products deteriorating and having to be thrown away. Inmost countries, around 30% of food products is said to be wasted throughout the supply chain (Chapman 2010). Even though a large part of this waste occurs at the final consumer, retail and foodservice also contributesignificantly.
All in all, the aforementioned aspects illustrate the strong interdependence between sustainability on the one hand and the control of food quality and food safety on the other hand and demonstrate why food quality and safety are often included in wider definitions of sustainability and can even be seen asfundamentalfor a sustainable food supply, especially with regards to global sourcing and its environmental impact.
Source: Akkerman, R., Farahani, P., Grunow, M. 2010. Quality, safety and sustainability in food distribution: a review of quantitative operations management approaches and challenges. OR Spectrum, 32: 863-904.