Facilitating Expedited Food Traceability and Data Dissemination in Emergency Situations

NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY: Section 306 of the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act, known as 'the Bioterrorism Act', requires the establishment and maintenance of records that allow for the identification of the immediate previous sources and the immediate subsequent recipients of food. These records, commonly referred to as aeone-step-forward one-step-backAE traceability pointers, enable traceability along the food supply chain in the event of detecting contaminated food. The Guidebook for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) Plan Development published by the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) dictates various data gathering regulations that should be employed pertaining to food safety. These regulations will be significantly enhanced if the data gathered is disseminated in an efficient manner to relevant partners. Expedited traceability along the food supply chain in the case of emergency is of the essence. This should be facilitated by a computerized process and a communication network that covers an emergency center and databases along the food supply chain for real time traceability and data dissemination, based on accessing the aeone-step-forward one-step-backAE pointers provided by the Bioterrorism Act. Such a system should further be enhanced by a convenient interface between the operator and the information retrieving system. This proposal concerns a communication network, and convenient user interface, providing for expedited traceability and data dissemination along the food supply chain. <P>APPROACH: The engineering efforts pertain to the development of two modules: <BR>Module 1 - Communication infrastructure: Facilitating on-line traceability during emergencies by forming a communication network between an emergency center and traceability pointers stored at food processors/distributors systems along the food supply chain. The type of gathered data can be extended to include lab tests and other vital information. Traceability, beside its own crucial importance, also forms the infrastructure of guided data dissemination, pertaining to the gathering and transmission of critical data from/to relevant points along the supply chain. The communication software will be based on JDBC (Cross-platform Java Database Connectivity). The developed solution will have a configuration file which will contain a unique identifier for each remote database and information needed for creating communication with each of these databases. Upon a request to send a query to a remote database, connector objects will be created accordingly. The system is intended to execute the following: Acquiring starting information from the remote dBase at the operator's request; Establishing contact with a required node (the required information is inherent in the application and concerns one-step-forward one-step-back records); Passing the received information to the operator and also keeping the information in an internal structure. The development efforts will also include the integration of adequate security solutions. The main tool to be used here is SSL - Secure Socket Layer. <BR><BR>Module 2: A GUI (Graphical User Interface) at the emergency center, employed by an operator, facilitating expedited on-line traceability and data gathering by creating search paths along the food supply chain, at the operator's discretion. Upon clicking with a mouse on a selected node along a displayed path, arrows emerging from the node and entering the node are displayed on the screen. These outgoing and incoming arrows are the one-step-forward one-step-back pointers associated with the selected node (i.e., the food producer/distributor represented by this node). Each such arrow has a new node indicated at its other edge. The emerging arrows from the node point to destination nodes along the supply chain. The Web Server will use JSP (JavaServer Pages) to dynamically generate appropriate HTML pages in response to the center's request. The connection will be done by HTTP. In order to simplify the installation, distribution, upgrading and maintenance, CGI (Common Gateway Interface) technology is to be used. Using CGI together with JSP technology, the program can treat the information as pure HTML documents. The emergency center side will see only the output of its request as static HTML that has been pre-processed on the sever side and reconstructed into standard HTML. Of course, the system can treat a multiplicity of operators, possibly located at different centers. Security adjustments are to be made to accommodate this case.