Traceability helps improve product value

Using QR code scanning, customers will easily have more complete information about the product.

Transparency of product information

According to Dang Phuc Nguyen, General Secretary of Vietnam Fruit and Vegetable Association, currently, linking production with consumption of agricultural products plays a very important role in agricultural development, helping to enhance the benefits of actors participating in the value chain, especially farmers.

From there, we aim to limit small-scale production, contribute to increasing the scale of goods production, and allow the application of appropriate, modern production processes, ensuring product quality, improving management and administration capacity, and organizing production under contracts to avoid the situation of “good harvest, loss of price”…

In order to promote the consumption of agricultural products, many businesses and cooperatives have joined the electronic system applying information technology, using QR codes in traceability, to make information transparent for distributors, consumers. In fact, businesses and cooperatives participating in the application using QR codes have helped businesses and consumers prevent food of unknown origin from being sold on the market.

“Through evaluation from establishments, agricultural products produced safely in a chain with labels are sold at a price at least 20 percent higher than products produced without traceability”, Mr. Dang Phuc Nguyen assessed. He also said that applying information technology in production and consumption in a step-by-step chain helps improve the capacity of cooperatives and businesses in production and product supply. In particular, today’s consumers can use smartphones to access the date and month of manufacture, expiry date and origin of the product, so they can feel more secure about the quality.

Traceability of origin has been a mandatory requirement when Vietnam supplies goods to many world markets. According to Vinafruit representative, for major markets importing key Vietnamese agricultural products such as China, Japan, South Korea, the United States, the European Union (EU)… All of them provide mandatory regulations on implementing traceability activities for businesses in the exporting country, such as Regulation 178/2002/E of the European Union (EU), Food Safety Modernization Law (FSMA) of the United States, China’s regulations on plant quarantine and food safety for agricultural products imported through Orders 248 and 249, applicable from the beginning of 2022…

In fact, the construction of regulatory systems in countries tends to improve with increasingly stricter content, which businesses must meet if they want to sell to those countries.

According to the Department of E-Commerce and Digital Economy (Ministry of Industry and Trade), origin traceability stamping is an effective means to ensure the nature and origin of goods, such as handicraft products. However, the application of traceability stamps for each type of product can depend on many different factors such as each country’s regulations, product type and production method.

In Vietnam, although affixing origin traceability stamps on handicraft products is not mandatory, applying origin traceability stamps brings many benefits to handicraft products, including: helps consumers verify the origin of the product, thereby ensuring peace of mind about the quality and safety of the product. Thanks to origin traceability stamps, consumers can easily distinguish genuine handicraft products from counterfeit or counterfeit products. Furthermore, the use of traceability stamps demonstrates the production facility’s professionalism and commitment to product quality, thereby contributing to enhancing brand reputation…

Need more supports

According to Dang Phuc Nguyen, in order to promote the development of Vietnamese businesses, in line and integrate with the globalization trend, the Government has approved many programs and projects to support businesses in localities across the country in building origin traceability systems, applying modern technology to support origin traceability activities such as: Barcodes according to GS1 standards, QR codes, origin authentication…

However, developing a traceability system and promoting the consumption of agricultural products on a digital platform still has many difficulties, requiring the efforts of businesses and cooperatives as well as guidance and support from departments, branches, localities, and the central government in disseminating basic information technology courses to businesses, farms, cooperatives, and farmers. Thereby, it can be applied to production practices such as: electronic notebooks, exploiting safe production applications on the internet, serving traceability, finding input and output markets for product…

In addition, the Government needs to promote the construction of strong and widespread internet connection facilities throughout rural areas to meet the increasing needs of farmers and agricultural production enterprises. Even support 100 percent of the cost of implementing traceability with cooperatives and businesses whose products meet food safety and hygiene standards in line with VietGap standards or higher to help businesses easily sell products.

The Department of E-Commerce and Digital Economy said that in order to support businesses in applying technology in managing supply chains, monitoring operations, improving quality standards and prevent the problem of counterfeit goods on the market, the Department’s Center for Informatics and Technology is implementing the solution of affixing traceability stamps and genuine QR code product authentication stamps in e-commerce at https://truyxuat.gov.vn/.

This solution will help manufacturing facilities protect their brands from counterfeiting. This is also a competitive advantage for handicraft production establishments, helping to attract customers and increase revenue.