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Abstract: The CRDO (Consejo Regulador de la Denominación de Origen "Jamón de Teruel" - Governing Board of the Protected Designation of Origin "Ham from Teruel") is involved in the development of a system that guarantees the traceability of the pig's legs. This initiative is innovative since there is no other Governing Board which has such a system to respond to unforeseen circumstances occurred at the slaughterhouse unit. To accomplish the requirements, three different strategies have been followed: (i) RadioFrequency Identification (RFID) technology, which uses a wireless link to transfer data in a fast and easy way - just placing the tag within the communication range of the reader - between read/write access points strategically placed in the slaughter chain and tags attached to every pig's leg, (ii) the security of the traceability system, that provides evidence that all the controls in a production process have been activated. This enables the client to quickly verify that all the products have correctly passed through the production cycle with the guarantee of trust provided under the responsibility of the signer, and (iii) a free documentary management system (DMS), which is necessary to correctly manage the information collected during the slaughtering process. This paper is focused on the third strategy. To develop the documentary management system, we use the ISO 13250 which defines the Topic Maps paradigm, and its XTM specification. The combination of both technologies (RFID and XTM) in the traceability system offers several advantages to manage the online information in real-time.
Keywords: Traceability, RFID, Topic Maps, Documentary Management System
1. Introduction
Traceability has been defined as the ability to trace the history, application or location of that which is under consideration (ISO 2000), or as the ability of the retrieval of the history and use or location of an article or an activity through the registered identification (ISO 1994). Traceability is a growing business, particular for food and drug products. Traceability of drugs is primarily focused on ensuring that fake drugs are kept out of the system. In the case of food, the primary aim is the ability to track a food quality problem (such an outbreak of salmonella or excess antibiotics in meat). Traceability systems are mandatory in the European Union since January 1,...