- Food products are perishable and storage conditions affect product
quality and the rate of spoilage, requiring strict adherence to quality
guidelines for production, storage and residence time throughout the
chain. - Production and harvest of plant foods is seasonal while consumers
expect constant availability thereby placing increased demands on
storage facilities and transport technologies. - There is a clear awareness among consumers of the relationship be-
tween diet and health, which includes both the absence of unwanted
components such as pathogens and toxicants, either naturally present
or added, and ensuring the levels of components that are wanted such
as vitamins and minerals. Adequate risk prevention requires system-
atic quality control. - Small-scale production is an obvious characteristic of fruits and veg-
etables and a complicating factor in ensuring homogeneous products,
e.g., size and color of apples, requiring specialized organizational
structures. - The large number of retail outlets and wholesale distributors increases
the difficulty of adequate control of distribution quality and service
orientation while making it virtually impossible to define accurate
specifications for a given product. - Fresh food products are perishable and have only a very limited shelf
life which, when combined with small store inventories to reduce
costs, has resulted in systems with high delivery frequencies. - The primary aim of the food industry is to provide the community
with food products of good quality for a reasonable price. So gener-
ally, food products have low added value, which is a major drawback
for product innovation. This is particularly the case for fresh products.
Chain Ruptures and Product Quality
One characteristic of the traditional supply chain is the use of differ-
ing concepts of product quality by actors at different points in the chain.
Figure 1.4 gives an example of the large number of quality criteria a
plant food product has to meet and how they differ in the chain from
the breeder to the consumer. It should be obvious that no single prod-
uct can meet all the requirements indicated and that there is a clear need
for one integrated concept of product quality throughout any specific
supply chain.