IT applications in the quality management of Hungarian meat product chains

The manufacture, distribution and retailing of foodstuffs became an extraordinarily complex business activity. The complete food chain must provide for the implementation of the strictest quality standards and safety regulations. Problems of food safety can be solved by keeping (and enforcing) applicable regulations, by introducing modern quality assurance systems, by making possible the traceability of products and their identification. The safety of product lines and tracing of products cannot be solved without using information systems in a certain level. Our research focused on the IT support and development of quality management systems in the Hungarian meat industry, especially on food tracing systems, and on the utilized identification systems. In the framework of our research, we developed a research portal that presents the results about the meat industry. The portal refers also to planned modern quality control and tracing systems and to the publication of the knowledge base connected with the topic. In our study, it came to light that, agrarian traceability struggles with many more problems in general. Companies try to live up to expectation, but they often apply different solutions with totally different approaches, while serving several different market aspects, depending on their customers.