Beauty and wellness brands are increasingly focusing on ingredient traceability. What began with sourcing and tracing ingredients has now moved into the food and nutritional packaging. This offers consumers a clearer view of a product’s ingredients, ethical sourcing, and environmental impact.
In September, the Biden administration suggested moving nutrition labels from the back of food packaging to the front. Food and Drug Administration will regulate the updated food packaging regulations with a standard labeling system. According to a White House report, the administration wants this system “to help consumers quickly and easily identify food that is part of a health eating pattern, especially those with low nutrition literacy.”
The United States Treasury Department has discussed requiring that wine, beer, and liquor brands provide full ingredient and calorie labels on their bottles and products. Consumer advocacy groups, including the Consumer Federation of America, sued the Treasury Department in early this year to push for transparency. As early as this summer, the Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau may release guidelines and specifications to disclose allergens and ingredient information.
In September, Ritual Vitamins will offer traceable ingredients. Made Traceable is a new initiative that tracks one nutrient directly from the source of Ritual vitamin products. Lindsay Dahl, chief Impact Officer at Ritual, said, “Transparency, as a consumer, is something consumers value.” Traceability is much more than this. Traceability is more than that.
Fresh Del Monte Produce invested in October in a company that provides traceability technology for food safety. Decapolis will assist the fruit giant in launching the Decapolis Food Guard, a blockchain solution to record logistics from the farm to the distribution of the products.
Brands are caught between the consumer’s demand for transparency and the legislative pressure to increase ingredient transparency. Traceability could be the solution that the food and pharmaceutical industries need to survive.