THE LOGISTICS OF QUALITY PROTECTION

The Common Market standards that come into force at the beginning of 1993 provide for comprehensive measures to protect the quality of all goods, including meat and meat products. They require that it should be possible to follow products through all the phases of their production which means that it must be possible to identify them throughout the process. The possible ways of marking products (e.g. labels, dockets, tattooing, ear tags,, bar codes or magnet codes, transponders, DNA fingerprints) are first discussed and their applicability in logistical sequences at the various stages of marketing (animal producer, slaughterhouse, cutting firm, processing firm, final distributor is then considered critically. The identification of products should be looked at in connection with the record of important parameters of the production sequence, which are also required by the standards. Suggestions are made on the choice of production data, the technical realization of recording and recording processes and on the linking together of information. Measures to be taken against intentional or unintentional falsification of data or as a check on the functioning of quality protection measures are also discussed.