Traceability in the Italian dairy Industry: a regulatory-compliance instrument or also a marketing tool?

Abstract

Many scholars and experts on traceability really think that today the value this system brings to a company is changing. It should not be considered anymore just as tool to be used for pure regulatory requirements. Nevertheless, as Sparling et al. report “Most food-industry managers view traceability as a regulatory-compliance issue targeted at improving food safety” (2006, p. 160). In this study I interviewed six managers working in the Italian dairy industry to discover if the Italian dairy firms considered perceive traceability just as a duty to be accomplished because required from the law or as an effective tool also for marketing purpose as scholars think. In addition, I analyzed if the firms perceive that the benefits of traceability exceed the costs of implementing it. It results from the study that the interviewees think it is very difficult to quantify benefits and costs related to a traceability system and that they still perceive that the most important reasons to implement a traceability system are related to regulatory-compliance and health issues. However, the reasons behind those results seems to diverge according to the dimension of the companies.