The food traceability market size was valued at USD 16.8 billion in 2020 and projected to reach USD 26.1 billion by 2025, recording a CAGR of 9.1%. The growing demand for safe to consume products among the consumers is expected to drive the market. The Asia pacific segment is poised to dominate the market due to its high population demanding safe and secure food, it is projected to be the fastest-growing as well, owing to the larger demand of safety concern due to recent COVID outbreak in China.
Food Traceability Market Dynamics
Drivers :
Foodborne illnesses are generally caused due to the contamination of food with pathogens and mycotoxins. The presence of pathogens, such as Salmonella and Listeria, in food certainly compromises the microbiological safety and quality of food, thereby resulting in foodborne illnesses. According to the CDC, 76 million cases of foodborne illnesses are recorded in the US every year, resulting in 325,000 hospitalizations and 5000 deaths. Although, according to WHO, the WHO region of the Americas has the second-lowest burden due to foodborne diseases.
According to the Food Standards Agency (FSA), Campylobacter is the most common form of food poisoning in the UK. An estimated 280,000 people are affected by Campylobacter contamination in chicken annually. In 2014, in the UK, a study by the FSA inferred that most supermarket chickens were contaminated with Campylobacter bacteria.
According to WHO, the consumption of unsafe food caused nearly 600 million cases of foodborne diseases each year globally. Due to such instances, food safety has become a major concern attributed to serious health threats. This is projected to drive the demand for food traceability, thereby impacting the market growth positively.
Commercial food services have risen dramatically over the last three decades and require extensive food handling. This has led to an increase in the number of people handling food and various other changes such as new methods of producing and distributing food, which has led to a potential increase in the possibility of transmission of foodborne infections from handlers to consumers, thereby driving the demand for food traceability systems.
Restraints:
Traceability is related to tracing and tracking food products throughout the supply chain, from raw material to end consumer. Advanced technology-based solutions are available for tracking products through supply chains such as barcodes and RFID. In addition to supporting product traceability, the equipment also supports data capture, recording, storage, and sharing of traceability attributes on processing, genetics, inputs, disease tracking, and measurement of environmental variables. However, the implementation of these technologies includes concerns, such as protecting the privacy and security of data stored on the RFID tag by unauthorized access and tampering. Other threats caused by RFID include consumers becoming apprehensive about the privacy invasion as they feel they could be tracked if they have purchased RFID-enabled products. Therefore, the privacy issues of consumers and manufacturers regarding data sharing are inhibiting the growth of the global food traceability market.
Opportunities:
Stringent regulations set by the government in developed regions, such as Europe, are projected to further highlight the importance of food safety across all stages of the supply chain. For instance, EFSA (European Food Safety Agency) is raising the awareness of food safety in Europe and amendments are made in the General Food Law Regulation to improve risk assessment across the food supply chains. This will present opportunities for the adoption of traceability systems to assess and mitigate risks associated with food contamination.
According to the food safety director of the WHO, in the Eastern Europe and Central Asian regions, where food is dealt with by more than five ministries, a good level of communication should exist between the parties to ensure the safety of food from production to inspect food products. These trends would contribute to the growing demand for food traceability technologies and software to trace food product contamination.
Regulatory bodies, such as CDC, US FDA & USDA’s FSIS are closely collaborating at the federal level to promote food safety in the US. These bodies are enhancing capacities and improving surveillance and investigation of foodborne infections through PulseNet, the Integrated Food Safety Centers of Excellence, and other programs. This would present opportunities for technological developments in the food traceability market as they are effective in detecting the source of contamination, thereby identifying the source of foodborne infections.
Challenges:
End-to-end food traceability systems are expensive and challenging to implement. Traceability helps to minimize various kinds of costs, including the packaging cost, the cost of rejected products, and the cost involved in the recall of contaminated food products. In comparison to the cost of record, product differentiation, and cost of certifying a product against certain standards, the cost of the establishment of a traceability system creates a burden on food manufacturers. The establishment of traceability systems includes the installation of hardware, software, systems engineering, training, support, and system upgrades, which is comparatively expensive.
High-end technologies, such as RFID and blockchain, used for effective food traceability, are associated with high costs. Furthermore, an increased focus on system upgrades and the necessity for accuracy and reliability of data further results in an increase in the cost of these traceability systems. The cost of procuring these technologies is high for food manufacturers, particularly in low and middle-income economies.
The cost related to advanced food traceability systems is considered a barrier and a major challenge for their mass adoption. With the continuous increase in demand for food traceability to address food safety issues globally, a large number of traceability tags are produced every year. This is projected to increase the cost of silicon-based tags that contain a unique serial number of food products. However, it is likely that with the increase in the adoption of food traceability technologies, the costs are likely to decline. This is projected to drive the growth of the food traceability market.
Asia Pacific is projected to account for the fastest-growing market
Due to the high population in the region and the high purchasing capacity, consumers are looking for high quality of safe food to consume. The shift in the consumption habits of the population due to an increase in the awareness regarding healthy food and beverages is also increasing the demand for food traceability services. The millennial population is increasing the demand for clean and safe food & beverages, which is again a driving factor for the food traceability market.
Key Market Players:
Top Food Traceability companies are C.H. Robinson (US) ,Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc (US), OPTEL GROUP (Canada), Cognex (US) , Honeywell International Inc. (US), SGS SA (Switzerland), Zebra Technologies (US), Bar Code Integrators (US), Carlisle (US), Merit-Trax (Canada), FoodLogiq (US), Safe Traces (US), Food Forensics (UK), Bext360 (US), rfxcel (US), Covectra (US), SMAG (France), TE-Food (Germany), Mass Group (US), Source Trace (US), Trace One (US), Crest Solutions (Ireland), Traceall Global (UK), and VeeMee (Croatia).
