Traceability in food supply chains: a systematic literature review and future research directions

Abstract

The food traceability system (TS) provides visual services for consumers by recording every operation procedure of food supply, processing, marketing as well as distribution throughout the supply chain. This study aims to review the academic papers which are related to food supply chain traceability (FSCT) and proposes a framework for future research. To do this, we carry out a systematic literature review of 278 peer-reviewed scientific literature published between 1994 and September 2019. By classifying the FSCT into pre-study and post-study of TS implementation, this study reveals a number of future research directions of FSCT based on thematic findings and points out that the focus on such issues has shifted to the post-adoption study of TSs. This study further categorizes nine specific research topics from past literature and identifies specific opportunities of each theme for future research.