Afilias' Managed DNS team will be at ad:tech NY exhbiting their FlexDNS Platform.  Stop by Booth #1938 to find out which flexible DNS solution is right for you!

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Afilias Managed DNS Services will be at Booth #622 at the 2010 Comptia Breakway Conference.  Join us in San Antonio to learn how to ensure 100% up-time reliabililty for your web presence with Afilias' DNS.  Afilias VP, John Kane will be speaking as part of the "Security in the Cloud" Panel to be held on August 12th at 11am.

Afilias Discovery Services' Ali Rezafard will be a panel member at:

Session 7: Governance and public policy

Who is responsible for naming and identifying the IOT within Europe? What are the defining set of principles and regulation underlying the governance of IOT? How can an open, independent, transparent and accountable governance of the internet be created? The European Commission suggests that private companies should continue to take the lead in the day-to-day management of the operation of the internet, as long as they are accountable and independent. What is the role for public authorities and how can an architecture be set up with a sufficient level of decentralised management so that European public authorities can exercise their responsibilities as regards transparency, competition and accountability? What policy tools should be exercised to ensure stakeholders are accountable?

A recent recall of Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein (HVP) has once again reinforced the harmful effects of a disconnected supply chain.  HVP is an ingredient found in many spices, sauces, and mixes, products which are themselves used in millions of foods.  Recalls such as these can severely affect consumer brand confidence.   Because of the broken chains in our traceability system, many more brands are affected because most food manufacturers cannot see where all of the contaminated products have come from upstream nor can they see what products have been affected downstream.  There are things that can be done today, however, to enable clearer visibility along the supply chain and to help you get ready for a future National Traceability System, as proposed by the U.S. Congress.  As a provider of traceability services, Afilias has some best practice recommendations for you for establishing a framework to help you view your product data from farm to fork.

Establish an identifier strategy.  A unique identifier can be used to differentiate your product to improve visibility.  Some examples of unique identifier technologies include livestock ear tags, RFID chips, 2D data matrix barcodes and serialized ID numbers, such as an Ipv6 address.  There are 3 important considerations that should be address when establishing an identifier strategy that works best for you and that will make traceability easier to implement.

1. Your identifiers should be standards-based.  This will enable your organization to more easily and clearly communicate with others down the supply chain in a uniform way.  Most standards recommended for use today have the ability to hold multiple  data points that are critical to traceability.  For example, a standardized serial ID number can tell us the birth date, order, and location of an animal.
2. Your identifiers should be unique.  The more specific an identifier is, the better.  Being able to uniquely identify each of your products or each of the ingredients going into your product can prevent delays and loss of non-contaminated product in the event of a recall.  If applying a unique identifier to your product or ingredient is cost prohibitive or infeasible at this time, even applying a unique identifier to a lot number is a great start that will significantly increase the amount of useful data and create a more detailed history of each product.   Once this is established, it will be far more economical in the future to begin to drill down further, should regulations mandate it.
3. You should consider relevant industry or association recommendations.  If there is already a standard adopted by your industry, we would strongly recommend using it.  Uniformity of identifiers in a product category and supply chain can ease traceability and visibility.  This will enable you to more easily communicate data with those in your supply chain, should you want to, to prevent unnecessary harm to consumers and to minimize the loss of non-contaminated product.

 

Collect and Store your Data.  Choose a data collection and storage system that works for your organization’s needs and capabilities.  Many organizations create their own in-house solutions, or choose from one of the options available on the market.  Whichever works best for you, it is important to make sure that your solution enables you to keep an up-to-date database of your products, their identification properties, and the ability to store movement at least one or two steps up or down the supply chain.    

Comply with a National Traceability System.  Afilias’ Discovery Services is a traceability solution that fits the above criteria and will provide you visibility for your product that will allow you to comply with the National Traceability System that is being proposed by Congress.  In effect, it works much the same way as a Web search engine does searching for the unique identifiers associated with contaminated products.  Discovery Services can work with any of the standardized identifiers discussed and, in the event of a recall, can easily find each specific product no matter what kind of identifier it is.  The more unique the identifier, the more specific the ADS results will be.  In addition, ADS provides enhanced security allowing visibility only into specified information.  Each participant along the supply chain can choose to share only relevant data with partners and be confident that it will remain unshared with competitors.

Establishing full Farm-to-Fork traceability will enable us to more quickly and accurately get the full history of product data along the entire supply chain when a recall occurs.  We can get the RIGHT foods off the shelves and off of consumer’s plates giving them the confidence that they are feeding their families safe, healthy meals.

Come visit Afilias at booth #535 to learn about our new FlexDNS Platform and find a flexible solution that works for your business. While you're there don't forget to enter to win an Eee PC netbook!

The dotMOBI team will also be at the booth demo-ing their new goMOBI mobile content solution!  Stop by to learn about the reseller options for this great new product offering!

Afilias will be exhibiting at the 2010 Food Safety Summit in Washington, DC.  Stop by booth #727 to learn how Afilias Discovery Services enables true end to end traceability in the supply chain!

Afilias Discovery Services VP, Brian Cute, will be speaking on the panel: Traceability - Supply Chain Wide Adoption of Electronic Traceability.  The panel will be held Tuesday, April 13th at 1:45 pm in the Exhibit Hall Theatre A.

Afilias will be exhibiting at this year's DNSSEC Pavilion at the FOSE show.  Stop by booth #2012 to learn about DNSSEC implementation from our experts!

Afilias is a silver sponsor of the 6th Annual North American Summit on Food Safety. Afilias' Ali Rezafard will be featured on a panel discussion on Tuesday, March 9th at 2:15 p.m. entitled "Best practices in tracing food and pathogens to provide quicker recalls that are more efficient". Visit our booth to discuss how Afilias Discovery Services can provide complete and secure end-to-end traceability in a supply chain. 

Hearing explores reform of U.S. food safety system; sets stage for Senate action this year

WASHINGTON – October 22, 2009 – The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee today held a hearing to discuss S. 510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act and specific proposals for food safety reforms. Brian Cute, Vice President of Discovery Services for Afilias, a global provider of end-to-end supply chain traceability services, issued the following statement applauding the Committee’s effort and progress made toward establishing a national traceability system for food.

“Today was an important morning for food safety and it is encouraging that the committee is working on legislation that will create a national food tracing system. The establishment of a robust and effective food tracing system will provide the FDA with the information it needs to conduct targeted and effective recalls, protect industry from losses, and most importantly, restore Americans’ confidence in their food supply.

“As a top priority, S.510 must enable government, industry and technologists to work together through pilot projects to develop a scalable and interoperable food traceability system that ensures all players in the food supply chain will embrace technologies to meet the traceability requirements set out in the bill. As a traceability technology provider, Afilias looks forward to working with the Congress and the FDA and providing our expertise through pilot projects to demonstrate which technologies available today will best deliver ‘farm to fork’ traceability and make a national tracing system a reality.

“The House-passed food safety bill, H.R. 2749, makes great strides toward this end, including the establishment of pilots within the industry to develop a national tracing system. Afilias looks forward to the Senate taking a similar approach in its bill and hope that adequate funding and resources will follow to make these pilot projects possible.”

S. 510, FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, the Senate’s food safety reform bill that has garnered the most attention, contains provisions that require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to establish a pilot project to test and evaluate new methods for rapidly and effectively tracking/tracing fruits and vegetables in the event of a food-borne illness outbreak. Earlier this year, the House passed its version of food safety legislation, H.R. 2749, Food Safety Enhancement Act. H.R. 2749 contains more robust traceability provisions, in particular, requiring the Food and Drug Administration to issue regulations that require food producers, manufacturers, processors, transporters, or holders to maintain the full pedigree of the origin and previous distribution history of the food and to link that history with the subsequent distribution history of the food. It also establishes an interoperable record to ensure fast and efficient traceback. Prior to issuing such regulations, FDA would be required to conduct a feasibility study, public meetings, and pilot projects.

The Senate HELP committee will now work to schedule a markup of S.510.

About Afilias
Afilias is a global provider of Internet infrastructure services that connect people to their data. Afilias' reliable, secure, scalable, and globally available technology supports a wide range of applications including Internet domain registry services, Managed DNS, and services in the RFID and supply chain market with its Afilias Discovery Service.

About Afilias Discovery Services
Afilias Discovery Services is a standards-based hosted registry service providing true end-to-end traceability. ADS allows you to securely and selectively share "track and trace" information.  Fully interoperable and identifier agnostic, with ADS you can conduct surgically precise product recalls, improving consumer safety and confidence while reducing business impacts.

Dublin, Ireland - 18 August 2009 - Afilias, a global provider of internet infrastructure services, today announced that Ali Rezafard, the lead member in the development and implementation of Afilias' Discovery Services platform, has been selected to chair the Software Action Group at EPCglobal. 

EPCglobal leads the development of industry-driven standards for the Electronic Product Code^TM (EPC) to support the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in implementing traceability technology for supply chains.  The EPCglobal Software Action Group (SAG) works to define software interface and other standards both within EPCglobal network elements as well as between elements from other enterprise systems.

 "Quick, accurate, and secure traceability of information through the supply chain is extremely necessary in today's world of food and product recalls," said Mr. Rezafard.  I am excited to be able to provide my expertise from Afilias to ensure that the EPCglobal standards are further developed to address the international need for interoperable supply chain track-and-trace technologies."

Mr. Rezafard has been with Afilias since 2007 as a Solutions Architect for Afilias' Discovery Services which provides secure and selective visibility services to global supply chain participants.  Mr. Rezafard's co-chair on the SAG is David Husak, CTO of Reva Systems who participates on other EPCglobal teams including the hardware (HAG) and business (BAG) action groups.

About Afilias Discovery Services

Afilias Discovery Services is a standards-based hosted registry service providing true end-to-end traceability. ADS allows you to securely and selectively share "track and trace" information.  Fully interoperable and identifier agnostic, with ADS you can conduct surgically precise product recalls, improving consumer safety and confidence while reducing business impacts. For additional information visit www.afilias.info/ads

About Afilias

Afilias is a global provider of Internet infrastructure services that connect people to their data. Afilias' reliable, secure, scalable, and globally available technology supports a wide range of applications including Internet domain registry services, Managed DNS, and services in the RFID and supply chain market with its Afilias Discovery Service. For additional information please visit http://www.afilias.info/.

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