Traceability, recalls, industry reputation and product safety

Sometimes, authorities are unable to rapidly identify the origin of a tainted product. In such cases, recalls or warnings often apply to all suppliers, even to those that had not contributed to the contamination. Traceability enables more targeted recalls by identifying the products origin more specifically. In this article, we show how increased traceability protects the reputation of industries by limiting the size of recalls. We show the relationships between traceability and the level of food safety with many identical small farms in a competitive industry and for an industry using collective action to set rules and standards.