​Itaueira invests in the Traceability of Rei brand products to ensure safety and quality

Itaueira, a Brazilian producer of Rei brand melons and mini watermelons, guarantees the quality of its products with traceability - a mechanism that allows identifying the origin and trajectory of food from planting to the consumer's home -, which has acquired significant importance in recent times, mainly because of the rules on international trade in agricultural products and the new standard from the National Health Surveillance Agency on food traceability.

While the market is looking for ways to adapt to the requirements of RDC 24 - ANVISA's standard that deals with food traceability - and exports to countries such as the United States and the European Union, Itaueira uses food traceability with codes that can even be read internationally. The first system was implemented in 2011 and since then it has come out ahead in providing important information to consumers about its products. “We do this, not only to sell to other countries or meet national standards, but mainly, to sell quality fruit in complete safety on the domestic market”, highlights José Roberto Prado, commercial director.

Rei products can be identified fruit by fruit, box by box. Identification allows the buyer to collect information in any way they wish, just by reading the QR Code, using Smartphones. This technology and a rich database allow all the links involved in the fruit purchasing, selling and consumption chain to know when the seed was planted, what type of fertilizer it received and with what frequency and intensity, the harvest date, when it arrived to the supermarket warehouse, how it was processed and the time it took to reach the consumer's table.

In Brazil, information on food traceability only becomes mandatory after the validation of this Anvisa standard. However, at Itaueira, the system is constantly modernized and used by the fruit producer to acquire consumer feedback. “When someone calls to say something about Melões Rei, we activate the traceability system and, in this way, we can know the origin and exactly what situations the product went through to confirm or correct the production and logistics process”, explains Amanda Prado, Administrative Manager at Itaueira. With the codes, it is possible to go further and see the entire history of the fruit, including the type of seed used, the fertilizers applied, the frequency and intensity, the number of hours of irrigation per day, the amount of water applied, whether the plant it got rained on, etc.