From Farm to Fork, Traceability Designed to Ensure Freshness, Addresses Consumer Concern
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C., April 30, 2008 —
Consumers are growing increasingly concerned about the safety, quality and social impact of their food. The Food Marketing Institute’s 2007 annual survey of consumer trends found a 20 percent decline in consumer confidence that supermarket food is safe. Two North Carolina companies, FoodLogiQ and Smart Online, are introducing a food safety and defense solution, National Food Safety System (NFSS), to enable producers, processors and retailers to satisfy their customer demands in a low cost and easy-to-use manner.
“We worked with Smart Online to integrate on-demand food safety functions, including audit scheduling and fulfillment and laboratory testing into our proven RFID based traceability solution. FoodLogiQ is building toward a food safety and compliance system that meets the growing needs of today’s demanding, global marketplace and helps to restore consumer confidence in the food industry,” said Andrew Kennedy, president, FoodLogiQ.
The NFSS is unique in that it combines low cost, on-demand food safety and defense modules with a world-class traceability engine and consumer textable farm of origin label codes. The NFSS can be used for all types of food, by all participants from growers to grocers in the local and global food supply chain to produce, process, distribute, defend and market high quality, safe food.
“Smart Online’s back-end technology enables organizations in the food chain ranging from a single farmer to local grocery stores to have a comprehensive solution without the upfront cost, ongoing maintenance or need for technology staff required by traditional software,” said Tom Furr, chief strategy officer, Smart Online. “We encourage all organizations of any size along the food supply chain to use this
solution to assist in their daily demands required to bring the freshest food to America’s kitchen tables.”
The system is designed to address several significant industry issues, including:
• Global Food Safety Initiative – A major food retailers’ demand for food suppliers to meet one of the Global Food Safety Initiative standards by the end of 2008 left many food suppliers with a daunting compliance task ahead. With a food safety consultant marketplace and an open third party audit system, the NFSS offers a low-cost solution to help food suppliers build GFSI compliant food safety
systems.
• Product ID, Traceability and Recall – The software system incorporates traceability capabilities, which, in the event of a recall, could rapidly pinpoint and remove tainted products. This is a core requirement of GFSI compliant food safety and quality systems.
• Sustainability Produced Local Food – With the NFSS, grocers and consumers can support environmental sustainability by purchasing locally grown products with the assurance that the products have met the same rigorous quality and safety standards as national brands.
“FoodLogiQ has been extremely helpful to us in developing business and traceability solutions for local farms and markets. We’re thrilled to be working in partnership to develop local, sustainable food systems,” said Jennifer Curtis, project director, NC Choices, a Center for Environmental Farming Systems initiative. www.ncchoices.com
About FoodLogiQ
FoodLogiQ links the people in the world's food supply from the consumer to the grower. FoodLogiQ web-based workflow, compliance and traceability systems are used by individuals, companies and industry associations to help defend the food supply from intentional harm and communicate branded Food Quality and Safety.
FoodLogiQ LLC is based in the Research Triangle Park, North Carolina with a technology center located in Calgary, Alberta. FoodLogiQ Canada was formerly known as Clarkston Canada. For more, visit www.FoodLogiQ.com.
About Smart Online
Smart Online, Inc. (OTCBB: SOLN) delivers private-label, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications designed to enable its corporate partners to acquire and retain small business customers. Smart Online’s applications help partners increase their recurring revenue, while aiding their small business customers to more efficiently start, manage and grow their businesses. To learn more, please visit www.smartonline.com.
Smart Online and the Smart Online logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Smart Online Inc. in the United States. Other marks belong to their respective owners.
Contact:
Andrew Kennedy, President
FoodLogiQ
Tel 919-321-2061 | Fax 919-287-2215 fax
E-mail info@foodlogiq.com
www.foodlogiq.com
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