Investigation of the Standard System of Agricultural Product
Traceability
Jia Hao, Yangji Wei, Fangfang Chu and Heyan Wang
Sinochem Agriculture Holdings Co., Ltd, Beijing, China
Keywords:
Agricultural Product, Traceability, Standard.
Abstract: The traceability of agricultural products plays an important role to ensure the quality and safety of agricultural
products from field to table. Both domestic and foreign countries attach great importance to the traceability
of agricultural products. At present, the agricultural products traceability industry in China develops rapidly.
A standard system is needed to regulate this industry. This paper investigated the current national standards,
industry standards, and local standards in the agriculture and food industry, and analyzes the standards types,
standards issuing organizations, traceability products categories, age of standards, and main contents of
standards, showing the status of standards in this field and providing references for relevant practitioners. At
the same time, this paper analyses the potential problems of agricultural product traceability standards at
present and puts forward corresponding suggestions.
1 INTRODUCTION
As a kind of food, edible agricultural products include
planting products, animal husbandry products, and
aquatic products, covering a wide range of categories
(Wang, 2018). Agricultural products are essential for
human survival and occupy a large proportion and an
important position in the global supply chain.
However, the supervision of agricultural products is
difficult, "red duck egg", "toxic leek", "clenbuterol"
and other agricultural product safety incidents occur
frequently, indicating that there are still hidden
dangers to the quality and safety management of
agricultural products, which need to be guaranteed
through certain measures. (Li, 2021)
The traceability of agricultural products is to
collect and record detailed data on the production,
processing, circulation, and sales, establish an
information database for the entire supply chain of
agricultural products and strengthen the quality and
safety management of agricultural products. Both
domestic and foreign countries attach great
importance to the traceability of agricultural
products. Since mad cow disease has caused great
harm to food safety in Europe, the European Union
firstly started to use the traceability system. In 1997,
the European Union established a traceability system
for beef products and subsequently promulgated the
Food Safety White Paper and Good Traceability
Process. In 2002, the American Produce Marketing
Association and the Canadian Produce Marketing
Association jointly established the Traceability Task
Force to issue the North American Fresh Products
Best Traceability Practices. Japan promulgated the
Food Traceability Guidelines in 2003 and the Rice
Traceability Law in 2009. In 2012, Korea
promulgated the Agricultural Product History
Traceability Management Standard for the
producers, distributors, and sellers of agricultural
products. (Zhang, 2021; Chen, 2020; Jin, 2019)
The food safety traceability system has been
established in China after we joined WTO in 2001
(Li, 2018). Article 41 of the newly revised
Agricultural Products Quality and Safety Law of the
People's Republic of China in 2022 added new
requirements for the quality and safety of agricultural
product traceability. At present, China has achieved
positive results in the construction of the agricultural
product traceability system. National and local public
agricultural product traceability platforms have been
built, such as the National Agricultural Products
Quality and Safety Traceability Management
Platform, and Aquatic Products Quality and Safety
Traceability Platform in Guangdong province. At the
same time, social forces and capital have invested in
the construction of agricultural product traceability
systems and achieved good results. For example, the
88
Hao, J., Wei, Y., Chu, F. and Wang, H.
Investigation of the Standard System of Agricultural Product Traceability.
DOI: 10.5220/0012002700003625
In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Food Science and Biotechnology (FSB 2022), pages 88-92
ISBN: 978-989-758-638-5
Copyright
c
 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

MAP beside system, a whole-process quality control
traceability system of Sinochem Agriculture
Holdings, controls the quality of agricultural products
by the key growth periods, core environmental
parameters, and quality inspection indicators.
Through the blockchain traceability platform, the
MAP beside system collects information on
agricultural product planting, warehousing,
processing, logistics, taste evaluation, and
endorsement. The MAP beside system assigns this
information to "three stamps and one index", that is,
quality stamps, time stamps, geographic stamps, and
green indexes, which are displayed to consumers.
With the rapid development of agricultural
product traceability, there are also some problems,
such as the difficulty in guaranteeing data
authenticity and security. A complete standard system
is required to regulate this industry. This paper aims
to investigate the current standards of agricultural
product traceability in China, and objectively display
the status of agricultural product traceability
standards, providing references for relevant
practitioners. In addition, this paper analyzes the
potential problems in this field and puts forward
corresponding suggestions.
2 INVESTIGATION CONTENTS
The scope of this investigation is the current national
standards, industry standards, and local standards that
specifically regulate traceability in the agriculture
and food industries. As of September 2022, a total of
157 relevant standards have been collected through
the National Standard Information Public Service
Platform. This article analyzes the standards types,
standards issuing organizations, categories of
traceability products, age of standards, and main
contents of standards.
3 RESULTS & DISCUSSION
3.1 Types and Standards Issuing
Organizations of standards
Among the 157 standards in this investigation, 20 of
them are national standards, 45 of them are industry
standards, and 92 of them are local standards.
Among the national standards, most of them are
issued by the State Administration for Market
Regulation, with 15 standards accounting for 75%.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued
3 standards. The All-China Federation of Supply and
Marketing Cooperatives issued 2 standards.
Among the industry standards, 46.7% are
agricultural industry standards and aquatic industry
standards. As can be seen in Figure 1, The rest of the
industry standards involve domestic trade, entry-exit
inspection and quarantine, supply and marketing
cooperation, and certification and accreditation. It
shows that the traceability standard is of great
significance in the circulation of agricultural
products.
Among the local standards, a total of 18 provinces
issued traceability standards for agricultural products
or food. Inner Mongolia and Anhui ranked first and
second in terms of the quantity of the standards. Inner
Mongolia issued 18 standards, and Anhui issued 13
standards. Table 1 shows the quantity of the standards
issued by each province.
Figure 1: The proportion of agricultural product traceability standards in various industries.
Agricultural
Industry; 40,0%
Aquatic
Industry;
6,7%
Domestic Trade Industry;
22,3%
Entry-Exit
Inspection and
Quarantine
Industry; 13,3%
Supply and Marketing
Cooperation Industry;
13,3%
Certification and
Accreditation
Industry; 4,4%
Investigation of the Standard System of Agricultural Product Traceability
89

Table 1: The quantity of the standards issued by each
province.
Serial Number Province
Quantity of Local
Standards
1 Inner Mongolia 18
2 Anhui 13
3 Hebei 8
4
Jiangsu 7
5
Shandong 7
6 Henan 7
7
Jilin 5
8 Xinjiang 5
9
Guangxi 4
10
Tianjin 3
11
Zhejiang 3
12
Guangdong 3
13 Liaoning 2
14 Sichuan 2
15 Guizhou 2
16
Guangdong 1
17
Jiangxi 1
18
Ningxia 1
3.2 Traceability Product Categories of
Standards
Agricultural products cover a wide range of product
categories. This paper analyses the agricultural
product categories involved in traceability standards.
The statistical results of traceable product categories
are shown in Figure 2. (There is a situation where one
standard specifies multiple products.) There are 51
standards for all agricultural products. The other
standards aiming at a certain kind of specific
agricultural product have covered the main types of
agricultural products, involving fruit, vegetable,
livestock and poultry, aquatic product, grain and its
product, tea, etc.
The standard quantity is larger for livestock,
poultry, and vegetable, which matches the actual
situation that these types of products have more
varieties and are easily polluted. In 2010, the Ministry
of Commerce launched the meat and vegetable
circulation traceability system construction project,
which promoted the formulation of a large number of
meat and vegetable traceability standards, such as
SB/T 10681-2012 Technical requirements for
information communication of meat and vegetable
distribution traceability system, SB/T 10682-2012
technical requirements for information sensoring for
meat and vegetable distribution traceability system,
and SB/T 10684-2012 Technical requirements for
information processing for meat and vegetable
distribution traceability system.
Some provinces have formulated special
traceability standards for their characteristic
agricultural products. For example, Inner Mongolia
has formulated traceability standards for local
specialty products such as oats, potatoes, beef, and
mutton. Jilin province has formulated DB22/T 2171-
2014 Management specifications of special marks of
use for Geographical Indication Products. Ningxia
province has formulated DB64/T 1652-2019 Ningxia
Wolfberry Traceability Requirements.
Figure 2: Product categories of agricultural product traceability standards.
51
38
26
14
11
6
5
444
3
11
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
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90

It is worth mentioning that some standards
provide requirements for the traceability of
agricultural inputs. For example, the Bureau of
Agricultural Means of Production of the All-China
Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives
issued GH/T 1223-2018 Seed Traceability System
Construction Specifications, GH/T 1225-2018
Agricultural Material Quality Traceability System
Construction Specifications, and GH/T 1200-2018
Agricultural material Traceability Electronic tag
(RFID) Technical Specifications. Anhui province has
formulated DB34/T 2211-2014 Specification for
Agricultural Input Traceability Information, which
regulates the traceability information coding,
collection, and management requirements of
agricultural inputs such as seeds, seedlings,
fertilizers, pesticides, veterinary drugs, feed, and feed
additives. Such standards will extend standardization
to the further front end of the agricultural product
traceability chain, which is conducive to the
sustainable, healthy, and stable development of the
agricultural product traceability system.
3.3 Age of Standards
It can be seen from Figure 3 that 49.7% of the age of
standards is within 5 years, and 38.9% is 5-10 years.
And there are still many new national standards being
formulated. This shows that although the agricultural
products traceability system in China started late, it
has developed very rapidly in the past ten years.
However, 11.5% of the age of standards is more
than 10 years, indicating that some standards need to
be reviewed and revised in time according to the
development of the industry.
Figure 3: Age of Agricultural Product Traceability
Standards.
3.4 Main Contents of the Standards
The traceability industry of agricultural products is an
interdisciplinary industry involving agriculture, food,
traceability, informatization, etc. With the
development of the industry and the update of
technology, other emerging technologies and
demands will continue to appear. In addition,
traceability has gradually become a relatively mature
service, which requires the regulation of the
agricultural product traceability industry from
multiple fields. By sorting out the industry, this paper
proposes an agricultural product traceability standard
system, as shown in Figure 4. This standard system
includes three sub-systems: basic requirements,
technical requirements, and service requirements.
This paper analyzes the main contents of the collected
standards based on this standard system.
Table 2 shows the proportion of the main contents
of the currently published standards. As can be seen
from Table 2, the current standards mainly focus on
traceability technical requirements. And there is no
service requirement standard at present.
Figure 4: Agricultural products traceability standard system.
within 5
years;
49,7%
5-10
years;
38,9%
10+ years,11,5%
Informatization
Technical
Requirements
Traceability
Basic
Requirements
Traceability
Technical
Requirements
Service
Organization
Service
Process
Service Effect
Evaluation
Informatization Basic
Requirements
Service
Content
Agricultural Product Traceability
Standard System
Technical Requirements
Basic Requirements
Service Requirements
Investigation of the Standard System of Agricultural Product Traceability
91

Table 2: Proportion of main contents of standards.
Sub-system Part
Standard
Proportion
Basic
Requirements
Traceability Basic
Requirements
0.7%
Informatization Basic
Requirements
3.8%
Technical
Requirements
Traceability Technical
Requirements
67.5%
Informatization
Technical
Requirements
28.0%
Service
Requirements
Service Organization 0.0%
Service Process 0.0%
Service Content 0.0%
Service Effect
Evaluation
0.0%
In the basic requirements sub-system, the
traceability basic standard is GB/T 38155-2019
Important product traceability—traceability
terminology, which defines the basic terms, technical
terms, management, and service terms in traceability.
The informatization basic standards include
standards for regulating traceability core metadata,
data sets, and data exchange.
In the technical requirements sub-system,
traceability technical requirement standards account
for 67.5%, including general traceability
requirements, traceability requirements for specific
categories of agricultural products, and traceability
requirements for specific links. Informatization
technical requirement standards account for 28%,
including traceability system requirements,
information equipment requirements, traceability
information coding requirements, and traceability
label requirements.
However, there is no standard to regulate the
traceability service at present.
4 CONCLUSIONS
This paper investigates 157 standards for agricultural
product traceability. According to the investigation,
Agricultural product traceability standards in China
developed rapidly in recent ten years. The standard
covers the main categories of agricultural products.
The standard contents cover basic requirements and
technical requirements.
At present, more and more institutions begin to
build agricultural product traceability service
platforms. Agricultural product traceability is a
relatively mature agricultural service, but the service
level is uneven. The effectiveness of agricultural
product traceability is not only related to technology
but also related to service, which decides whether the
traceability can be implemented smoothly. At present,
there is no standard to regulate the traceability
service. Therefore, it is necessary to formulate
agricultural product traceability service standards,
regulating the service organization, service content,
service process, and service effect evaluation.
Furthermore, now most of the traceability
standards are for edible agricultural products, and few
of them regulate agricultural inputs. As an important
part of agriculture, agricultural inputs, such as seeds,
fertilizers, and pesticides, have a direct impact on the
quality and safety of agricultural products. Therefore,
it is recommended to further regulate the traceability
of agricultural inputs.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This paper relies on the "Research on Standardization
of Agricultural Products Traceability Service"
program. Thanks to the team members for their
contributions to the collection, sorting, and analysis
of relevant standards during the investigation.
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