Produce Traceability Initiative Leadership Council members agree the increasing percentage of produce cases marked with PTI labels is a reassuring sign that momentum for PTI continues, supported by buyers who are preparing to receive labels later this year.

The Leadership Council, representing 32 companies in the produce industry, held its biannual meeting in mid-May in conjunction with the United Fresh 2013 convention in San Diego.

During the meeting, the council revealed that buyers are seeing between 22 percent and 50 percent of produce cases with PTI labels at their distribution centers and other facilities.

The council discussed implementation activities and progress made by both the grower-packer-shipper and buyer community, including a pilot project report about the benefits of using advance ship notices as an alternative to hybrid pallet tags to facilitate sharing Global Trade Item numbers, batch/lot numbers, and other key data elements useful for produce traceability.

"Based on industry experiences shared by both suppliers and buyers, PTI Leadership Council members agree that using ASNs with Electronic Data Interchange or a simple flat file format is a promising method of sharing traceability information among trading partners," Doug Grant, co-chair of the Leadership Council and senior vice president and chief operations officer of The Oppenheimer Group, which recently conducted a pilot using ASNs and will publish the results in the next few weeks, said in a press release.

The council also reviewed comments that the four administering organizations of the PTI are planning to submit to the Food & Drug Administration in response to the traceability recommendations made by the Institute of Food Technologists in support of the Food Safety Modernization Act.

Members agreed to provide joint comments from the Canadian Produce Marketing Association, GS1 US, Produce Marketing Association and United Fresh Produce Association on behalf of their members to express that PTI guidelines and best practices are in alignment with IFT traceability recommendations, conveying that the associations are not suggesting additional regulations are needed beyond the current law.

Once finalized, the comments will be available on the PTI website prior to the submission deadline of July 3, 2013 to the FDA.

"The great turnout and participation at our Leadership Council meeting demonstrate the industry's continued commitment to PTI implementation," Mike Agostini, senior director of produce at Walmart Stores and co-chair of the PTI Leadership Council, added in the press release. "The sell-side of our industry is ready, buyers are also preparing for rollouts in the near future, and the collaboration of the PTI community is helping the industry make progress with shared goals and growing expertise."