WASHINGTON — There had never been a public or private entity that brings together the agri-food sector to focus exclusively on food traceability issues until today, when a coalition of industry trade associations, along with the Food & Drug Administration, joined together to create the Global Food Traceability Center.

At a Sept. 11 press conference, here, the Institute of Food Technologists, chief organizer and leading voice on traceability issues, announced the first not-for-profit, unbiased scientific entity focused on product tracing in hopes of reducing recall response times and encouraging efficiency in the supply chain.

Founders, such as the Produce Marketing Association, Walmart, Cargill, National Fisheries Institute, the World Bank and Mars Co., will play a role in shaping key issues in the center's four priority areas: research; standards; education and training; and technology transfer.

IFT said the first two of three projects are already underway at the center: the development of a best practices document, a benchmark report on existing traceability standards among top trading countries; and development of traceability courses for online and classroom use.

Today's food supply chain is increasingly complex, and there must be trust in products available for the retailer's 140 million customers each week, said Jack Sinclair, Walmart's executive vice president of the grocery division, who spoke at the press conference.

It's increasingly clear, Sinclair said, that product traceability needs collaboration to work, and that no company or industry can do it alone.

Sinclair said Walmart can use product traceability to make the supply chain more efficient. In an abundance of caution, products are cleared from supermarket shelves that are mistakenly implicated in food recalls. Improving traceability can help that.

Traceability is more than food safety, said Sinclair. Better traceability can make supply chain more efficient.

For example, Walmart is trying to remove an additional day in the transport of fresh produce to give consumers an extra day of fresh produce at home.

"We've got high hopes that this initiative will help us understand all the products we sell better, understand where they come from and that will help us be a better business," he said.

FDA Senior Adviser Sherri McGarry said the center, among many uses, will help FDA document the benefits of product traceability systems. The agency is tasked with writing a regulation that will require product traceability for high risk foods under the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act.

FDA is in the process of drafting a report to Congress with recommendations on next steps for product traceability, another requirement under FSMA.

From the consumer's perspective, the 2006 E. coli outbreak associated with fresh spinach is a reminder of the price industry - as well as consumers -- pays during outbreaks and recalls, said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety program director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The spinach industry has yet to fully recover, she said.

Still, the core benefit of product traceability is to reduce the number of illnesses and reduce the number of people affected during outbreaks, DeWaal added.