Traceability, Product Recalls, Industry Reputation andFood Safety

Sometimes authorities are unable to identify rapidly the origin of a tainted product.In such cases, recalls or warnings often apply to all suppliers, even to those thathad not contributed to the contamination. Traceability enables more targetedrecalls by identifying more specically the product's origin. In this article, weshow how increased traceability contributes to protect the reputation of industriesby limiting the size of recalls. We show the relationships between traceability andthe level of food safety with many identical small farms in a competitive industryand for an industry using collective action to set rules and standards.[...]