The 2013 National Food Safety Awareness Week and the Fifth China Food Safety Forum were held in Beijing on the 17th. At the sub-forum in the afternoon on the subject of “Integrity and Combating Governance to Safeguard Food Safety”, Luo Qiu, Deputy Director of the China Article Numbering Center, stated that ensuring food safety can be divided into two aspects: “precaution” and “after-the-fact remedy”. Food safety traceability is the solution. One of the important means of remediating afterwards, and the uniform item code is the basis for achieving food safety traceability.

Luo Qiuke explained that food safety traceability uses food information technology to classify, collect, and analyze various types of food information on the food supply chain, and to complete the "step-by-step traceability and follow-up to the next step" at each node of the supply chain. Realize tracking and tracing of the whole process of production, processing, logistics and retail sales, so as to promptly warn the problems, lock the circulation range of the problem products, and achieve product recall.

It is reported that as early as 2000, China Article Numbering Center actively tracked the relevant work of international food safety traceability, and introduced the concept of food safety retrospection to China as early as possible. Luo Qiu expressed his views on the traceability of food safety at the meeting. First, the main body of implementation of food safety traceability is the enterprise. Second, the identification code for food safety traceability should be unified. Third, food safety traceability should be in line with international standards. Fourth, food traceability should be cost-effective.

The food company is the first person responsible for food safety. The food company must have a good grasp of food safety, be honest and self-disciplined, and must not cut corners. Faced with more and more demands from consumers for food traceability and facing the requirements of traceability in food safety law, Luo Qiu suggests that food companies must adopt means that can adapt to the company's future development, respond to the company’s situation and establish requirements for traceability. Its own traceability system suitable for the characteristics of the company, to achieve food tracking and traceability.

In addition, Luo Qiu-Qiao also mentioned that many food traceability systems came into being and they did play a role in their respective fields. However, the establishment of traceability of these foods lacked unified management and planning, and lacked consistent codes and logos. As a result, data could not be exchanged between systems, and information islands formed one by one. This was terrible in the “big data” era. So he suggested using a globally harmonized code for food safety traceability. A unified item code can string together people, objects, and businesses in the food production process to ensure that the content of the traceable information is accurate, and the format is standardized, making it possible to share and exchange information between different industries and different companies, and to maximize the integration of society. Resources, truly achieve efficient, low-cost food safety traceability.