Traceability resource
Traceability is a legal requirement under EU Regulation 178/2002 and UK retained food law. One step back, one step forward — where your ingredients came from, where your finished product went. The practical challenge is making those records work in a real recall scenario, not just on paper.
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One step back: supplier, delivery date, lot or batch code, quantity received.
One step forward: customer, dispatch date, batch reference, quantity sent.
Internal traceability — linking ingredient lots to finished batches — is the link most operations are missing.
Incoming goods section
Supplier name, product description, delivery date, lot or batch code, and quantity received. For allergen-containing or high-risk ingredients, this record is particularly important if a supplier recall lands.
Finished product and dispatch section
Product name, your internal batch code, production date, customer or distribution point, quantity, and dispatch date. This is what tells you how far the product has gone if it needs to come back.
Internal batch link
Which ingredient lots went into which production batch. This is the field most operations are missing. Without it, you can't scope a recall accurately — you know when deliveries arrived but not which finished batches they ended up in.
Mock recall worksheet
A simple exercise section for testing the records — can you trace a specific lot backwards and forwards in a reasonable time? Running this once or twice a year shows whether the system actually works.
For each delivery, you need the supplier name, the product, the delivery date, the lot or batch code from the packaging, and the quantity. For allergen-containing and high-risk ingredients especially — if a supplier issues a recall, you need to identify immediately which deliveries are affected and what finished product they went into.
For each batch dispatched, the record should include your internal lot code, the customer, the quantity, and the dispatch date. For direct-to-consumer businesses this works differently — you may not have individual records, but you should be able to identify the affected date range and sales channel.
Most businesses handle incoming and outgoing records reasonably well. What breaks down is the connection between them — which ingredient lots went into which finished batches. Even a simple production log recording the date, product, and the lot codes of key ingredients used is enough to close this gap for most small and medium operations.
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