The AZTI-Tecnalia Maritime and Food Research Centre has been one of the bodies chosen for collaborating in the first volume of the series "Food Traceability around the world", a collection that takes in key aspects of traceability in the food chain at an international level.

In the chapter corresponding to Spain, Alberto González de Zárate and Begoña Pérez-Villarreal have worked together on an article about "The traceability of tuna, Iberian pig and wine". In their conclusions they coincide in the need to put measures into place that enable information of a product to be obtained, if necessary from its point of origin to its final destination and viceversa. Amongst measures suggested is the development of standards and systems that encompass the totality of food chains and all the actors involved in these. That is, going from an unconnected traceability to a comprehensive, integrated one.

The collaboration is fruit of the proven experience at AZTI-Tecnalia in research into quality and safety management systems throughout the whole food chain, from the farm to the table. This experience has been transformed into the specialisation achieved in the field of traceability in three areas:

• Systems for identifying fraud, developing methodologies, based fundamentally on molecular biology, for identifying species and varieties.
• Traceability systems with the adaptation and introduction of systems in winegrowing, meat and fish sectors.
• Validation of traceability with the recent publication of the Practical Guide for the validation of traceability in fish products (www.azti.es/valid).

Arising from this growing social demand for having greater information on foodstuffs has been the Global Food Traceability Forum (GFTF), a forum given over to the dissemination of topics related to traceability in the food chain and the goal of which is to create a universal channel of communication to deal with this vital issue and its impact on world markets.

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