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Published on April 29, 2008

Asina Pornwasin

The Nation

Each pack of CP brand fresh-pork product that makes it to the supermarket can now be traced to its origin thanks to the deployment of radio frequency identification (RFID) in Charoen Pokphand Foods' (CPF) entire pork production process.

This is a working example of tracing food products from the finished products on the shelf back to the raw material at the slaughterhouse.

Executive vice president at the information technology and applications unit of Charoen Pokphand Foods, Praderm Chotisuparach said CPF has implemented RFID technology in its slaughterhouse to allow for traceability.

The company's slaughterhouse and eviscerate plant uses an embedded-RFID system that allows the company to identify each lot of raw materials as it arrives.

Usually, one hog is divided into two sections.

Once the hogs arrive at the pork processing plant, they are hung onto a hang rail, which carries an RFID tag, and information of each section of the hog is fed into a database.

The first bit of information includes the name of the farm and the lot number. Information is recorded at each stage of food processing and this procedure continues through the entire process of pork processing - from the raw material stage when the hog is cut into sections, through processing, till the time it makes it to the supermarket shelf as a packaged pork product.

Each pack of processed food carries information such as the name of the source farm, the finished-product type, weight, date of production and expiry.

"Each pack of finished food carries the information to enable us to track the product using the product code and lot number embedded in a bar code on each pack," Praderm said.

Though the package carries only the product code and lot number, details about each pack are kept in the database.

"At the packing stage, we transfer this information from the RFID tag to the bar code, pasted on each pack," he said.

Though CPF could trace products even without RFID tags, bigger lot sizes did pose a problem because all processes are manually operated. RFID deployment enables the company's executives to know the exact status of the products and the production line in real time.

"At our slaughterhouse, we process about 1,000 pigs every day. Thus, we have to generate about 400,000 to 500,000 records per day. This makes it necessary to have an automatic system. RFID is the right technology to fulfil our requirement. We can expand our production capacity and still have accurate information. More importantly, we always have the correct status of our production, such as the resources being utilised in each process," Praderm said.

 The company has also implemented RFID in its shrimp processing plants. It plans to expand the use of the RFID system to its chicken processing plants as well.