With recent food crises in Europe during these past years consumer confidence in product food safety has become an important issue for manufacturers and retailers. The EU Product Safety Directive and the new regulation on food law require businesses to account for the origin of their products and track them throughout the supply chain.

This ECR blue book describes best practices at pan-European level to trace products through the supply chain and to allow for efficient crisis management, based on commonly accepted EAN•UCC standards, such as unique identification of products and locations, pallet labelling, standardised messaging and information exchange. It describes product traceability as a supply chain end-to-end process from goods arriving at a manufacturer's factory (e.g. raw material, packaging material) to the finished product purchased by a consumer in an outlet and vice versa. It also includes a section on crisis management between manufacturers and retailers. The blue book is addressed to quality managers, supply chain/ logistics managers, factory and warehouse managers, customer and consumer services, legal departments, communication managers and IT departments. It will help companies of all sizes comply with current legislation and represents the common denominator of best practices already applied in Europe . The following subjects are excluded from the scope of this ECR Blue Book: internal traceability systems, feedstuff, allergy inducing substances, agricultural practices including the use of GMO’s, contamination prevention (e.g. pesticides).