Location: Nutrition, Food Safety/Quality
Project Number: 0204-41510-001-069-A
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jul 1, 2016
End Date: Jun 30, 2021
Objective:
Public policy concerning food and nutrition is dependent on the availability of reliable and current information regarding the nutritional content of commonly consumed foods. The USDA and USDA-ARS have maintained such data for more than 100 years, but the complexity of the current food system in the US makes it impossible to continue the work without partnerships with the private sector. The USDA-ARS and GS1 US enter into this Public-Private Partnership (PPP) for the purpose of enhancing the nutritional information in the ARS National Nutrient Database, and this agreement will provide the framework and support to conduct the project in order to ultimately fulfill the objectives of the PPP.
Approach:
GS1 US is a not-for-profit member organization established over 40 years ago by the grocery industry to administer and manage Universal Product Codes, also known as U.P.C.’s. The U.P.C. remains one of the most successful standards in history – with billions of barcodes scanned daily worldwide. This method of identifying products and capturing product data has evolved into what is now known as the GS1 System, the world’s most widely used supply chain standards. GS1 Standards continue to be widely implemented across the food supply chain, as is the GS1 Global Data Synchronization Network™ (GDSN®) which is used to share GS1 standards based product information among trading partners. There are GS1 offices located in more than 114 countries as the global standards are used every day in more than 150 countries around the world.
With many across industry looking to leverage the GDSN to populate the ARS National Nutrient Database, USDA ARS will provide funding to GS1 US (“cooperator”) for services to: 1) leverage commercial private sector global standards use in their operations and the industry practice of the GDSN to facilitate the automatic movement of nutritional data from food manufacturers to the ARS National Nutrient Database; 2) utilize existing commercial solutions to automate the movement of nutritional data from food manufacturers to the ARS National Nutrient Database using that system as well as another alternative for those who currently do not have data in the GDSN; 3) maintain best process to engage the food industry and encouraging them to submit nutritional data to the ARS National Nutrient Database using that system; 4) facilitate and enhance ARS and USDA technology transfer using these data transfer channels with ARS; and 5) Develop automated system to incorporate data needed by USDA sister agencies.
