Westminster, CO -- (SBWire) -- 06/19/2013 --The introduction at the federal level of a bill requiring labeling of bioengineered foods took place recently, as similar efforts were under way in several states. Indications were 52 bills with this aim have been introduced in 26 states thus far in 2013. In other states, such as Washington, there were drives to place on voter ballots propositions requiring the labeling of bioengineered foods.

Senator Barbara Boxer of California and Representative Peter DeFazio of Oregon on April 24 introduced companion bills in the Senate and the House of Representatives that would require the labeling of bioengineered foods. In each case, the bill is titled the Genetically Engineered Food Right-to-Know Act and would constitute an amendment to the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.

The bills include claims that the process of bioengineering food organisms results in material changes to food derived from those organisms, an assertion that is widely contested. They maintain individuals in the United States have a right to know if their food was produced with bioengineering for a variety of reasons, including health, economic, environmental, religious and ethical, and they note more than 60 countries, including important U.S. trading partners, have laws or regulations mandating disclosure of bioengineered food on food labels.

“Americans have the right to know about the foods they are purchasing,” said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director at the Center for Food Safety. “A vast majority of consumers have demanded that genetically engineered foods be labeled, and without mandatory labeling, American families are being left in the dark.”

Marc Simony of TraceGains, Inc., a full service supplier, compliance, and regulatory document management company commented, “TraceGains’ ActionForms™, or the customers’ existing supplier questionnaires, can be set up to request the new information; we would automatically scan for it. Certificates of Analysis can be augmented if needed with that attribute. Additionally, we can also scan for and automatically alert for it. For any COA where that information would be entire absent, we could automatically put that shipment on hold until clarity is brought to the situation. For R&D purposes, we could let our customers easily scan for that information when they need to source new ingredients from within their supply chain for innovation or renovation purposes.”

TraceGains (www.tracegains.com) is for quality, purchasing, product development, and other departments, that are burdened with manually managing suppliers and documents. TraceGains delivers full-service supplier, compliance, and regulatory document management solutions, including FSMA and GFSI. Unlike manual, ERP, or traditional document systems, TraceGains extracts data from documents and automatically takes action. TraceGains is proven to empower people to quickly solve problems, speed audits, and simplify continuous product improvement.

Supplier documentation storage, whether in file cabinets or in digital formats, may satisfy regulatory retention requirements, but does little to systematically unlock the wealth of business, compliance, and regulatory information they contain and you require on a daily basis to operate successfully.

By automatically analyzing and scorecarding supplier-provided documentation as it is received—such as certificates of analysis, qualification questionnaires, audit documents and their results, certifications (Kosher, Organic, etc.), insurance certificates, allergen questionnaires, and other import requirements (COOL, C-TPAT, FSMA, GFSI), among others—TraceGains helps food and nutraceutical manufacturers and ingredient processors automate document management, meet regulatory and industry compliance requirements, identify best and worst suppliers, source better with less risk, automatically raise product quality, and painlessly perform or participate in audits, all without needing to involve the IT department to help with complex technology.

TraceGains customers experience on average a 56% reduction in out-of-spec lot receipts, and a 20% reduction in attribute variability, resulting in enhanced continuous improvement, better performing ingredient and raw material inventory, improved cash flow, and long-term brand protection. Follow TraceGains on Twitter at @tracegains.

TraceGains, Inc.
www.tracegains.com
Marc Simony, Director of Marketing
pr@tracegains.com
720-465-9400