Cost and Benefit Analysis of Traceability in egg supply chain-Case study

Recently, the global food industry has been challenged by a series of incidents such as avian flu, BSE, and melamine milk. As a result, each actor in the food supply chain, especially consumers, are more concerned about food safety and quality issues. Under such circumstances, a food traceability system can be a good way to regain consumers confidence. However the economical effect of implementing a traceability system is still not clear for producers, distributors or retailers. This thesis assesses the cost-benefit structure of implementing a traceability system, and investigates how the costs and benefits allocate along the supply chain. This is researches through a case study of a traceability system implemented by the Gebr. van Beek group in an egg supply chain. The general structure, data, techniques, and quality control procedures are discussed in the case. Finally, a cost and benefit analysis of this case is presented. From this case analysis, it is found that distributor paid the most of cost of traceability implementation. The major costs are third party service cost and hardware cost. The major benefit of this system generates from market and sales profit.