Topic page — traceability. How to read the codes printed on a grocery package back to a specific plant, and exactly how far that gets you. Wisconsin field notes as of July 2026.

Traceability: reading a package back to a plant

1. Intro

Every package of USDA-inspected meat or poultry carries a federal mark of inspection with an establishment number — EST. 12345 for meat, P-12345 for poultry — and that number is a public record. It resolves, through USDA's Meat, Poultry and Egg Product Inspection Directory, to one specific plant at one specific street address^[1]. That is the single most load-bearing fact in this research project: the brand on the front of a package rarely says where the food was made, but federal law requires a different, harder-to-hide number to be printed somewhere on it, and that number is public. This page is the protocol for using it — plus the parallel systems for produce (PLU codes, lot codes, the FSMA 204 Food Traceability Rule), eggs (plant codes and Julian dates), and the honest limit of all of them: an establishment number identifies who processed or packaged a product, not the farm, feedlot, or flock. For most packaged and private-label groceries, the public trace ends at the plant gate. Saying so, precisely, is this page's actual job.

2. History

Federal meat inspection begins with a novel. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle ran serially starting February 25, 1905, and was published as a book in 1906; its depiction of Chicago's packinghouses, confirmed by an independent federal investigation, pushed a reluctant Congress to act^[2][3]. Theodore Roosevelt signed the Federal Meat Inspection Act on June 30, 1906, requiring continuous, carcass-by-carcass federal inspection of livestock slaughtered for interstate commerce^[2][3]. That act is the direct ancestor of the establishment number this page is built around: a federally inspected plant has always had to be identified, not just inspected, because a mark of inspection is only meaningful if it traces back to the plant that earned it.

Poultry lagged five decades behind beef and pork. Congress passed the Poultry Products Inspection Act in 1957, extending the same continuous-inspection model to poultry plants shipping interstate, and requiring sanitary facilities and accurate labeling^[4]. A decade later, the Wholesome Meat Act (1967) and Wholesome Poultry Act (1968) closed a gap: states had been running inspection programs of wildly varying rigor for intrastate plants, and the new laws required every state program to be "at least equal to" the federal one^[4]. That state/federal split is still alive today — it is why some Wisconsin meat plants carry a state inspection mark instead of a USDA EST. number, which matters for the field protocol below.

Eggs got their own statute in 1970, the Egg Products Inspection Act, mandating continuous inspection of liquid, frozen, and dried egg processing^[4]. Shell eggs in the dairy case are regulated slightly differently again: the USDA grademark and its plant number are administered not by FSIS but by USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service under the voluntary shell-egg grading program (7 CFR Part 56), and only cartons carrying the USDA grade shield are required to show a plant number in that specific "P-" format^[5]. USDA's inspection bureaucracy was itself reorganized more than once — the Food Safety and Quality Service, created in 1977, was stripped of its voluntary-grading functions and renamed the Food Safety and Inspection Service on June 17, 1981, the name still on every meat and poultry establishment number today^[6].

The next jump was not about meat at all — it was about everything. After September 11, 2001, Congress passed the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002, requiring broad "one-up, one-back" recordkeeping across the food industry: every facility had to identify its immediate previous source and immediate subsequent recipient for any food it handled^[7]. That is a shallower standard than what came later — no continuous chain required, just each link knowing its neighbors — but it was the first federal traceability mandate reaching grocery retailers and distributors, not just processing plants.

Produce got its watershed moment in September 2006, when an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak traced to bagged spinach grown in California's Salinas Valley sickened 199 people across 26 states, killed three, and put 31 people into hemolytic uremic syndrome^[8]. The leafy-greens industry's response was the California Leafy Green Products Handler Marketing Agreement, approved by the state in March 2007; within weeks, 71 handlers representing more than 99 percent of California's leafy-green volume had signed on, agreeing to government-audited food-safety practices and a working traceback system as a condition of membership^[9][10]. Arizona later stood up a parallel LGMA for its winter-growing region.

Congress moved on food safety broadly with the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, signed January 4, 2011 — the first major overhaul of FDA's food-safety authority since 1938. Section 204 directed FDA to identify high-risk foods needing additional traceability recordkeeping beyond the 2002 Bioterrorism Act's baseline^[11]. It took FDA more than a decade to finalize the regulation: the Requirements for Additional Traceability Records for Certain Foods — "FSMA 204," the Food Traceability Rule — was published November 21, 2022^[12]. It designated a "Food Traceability List" of higher-risk foods (fresh-cut produce, leafy greens and herbs, melons, tomatoes, peppers, sprouts, tropical tree fruit, shell eggs, soft/semi-soft cheeses, nut butters, ready-to-eat deli salads, and most seafood) and required standardized data at defined "critical tracking events." Meat and poultry regulated by FSIS are explicitly outside FSMA 204's scope — they already have their own, older, continuous-inspection regime built on the establishment number^[13].

The compliance date has moved, and moved again recently enough to require a date-stamp. The rule as finalized set a compliance date of January 20, 2026^[12]. On March 20, 2025, FDA announced it intended to extend that date by 30 months, formally proposing the extension in the Federal Register on August 7, 2025^[14]. Then Congress intervened directly: the Continuing Appropriations, Agriculture, Legislative Branch, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Extensions Act of 2026, passed in November 2025, directed FDA not to enforce the rule before July 20, 2028, and FDA has stated it intends to comply^[15]. As of July 2026, the operative compliance/enforcement date for FSMA 204 is July 20, 2028 — set partly by FDA's own proposed rule and partly by a congressional appropriations rider, not by a single finalized regulatory action. That distinction is worth keeping straight: "the rule" and "the enforcement date" currently sit in two different legal instruments.

3. Supply chain — inputs to shelf

The EST./P- number: meat and poultry

Format: on meat, the number is prefixed EST.; on poultry, P-^[16]. It sits inside the circular or shield-shaped USDA mark of inspection, or elsewhere on the package (a metal clip closing a casing, a tray insert) with a printed statement directing the reader to it — FSIS regulation requires a legible statement like "Plant No. on Metal Clip" if the number is off the main mark^[16]. It is small — often smaller than the sell-by date — and is not the UPC or the lot code.

That number is looked up at the FSIS Meat, Poultry and Egg Product Inspection Directory:

https://www.fsis.usda.gov/inspection/establishments/meat-poultry-and-egg-product-inspection-directory

FSIS publishes it as a searchable web tool and as raw CSV/PDF downloads ("MPI Directory by Establishment Number" and "by Establishment Name"), updated on a rolling basis — the establishment-number file checked for this research was time-stamped July 7, 2026^[1][17]. A free mobile app ("USDA MPI Directory," iOS and Android) mirrors the same dataset and supports lookup by establishment number, name, or zip code — the more practical tool to have open in a grocery aisle^[18]. Each directory entry carries the establishment's legal name and any "doing business as" name, its full street address, its HACCP size class (Large: 500+ employees; Small: 10–499 employees; Very Small: fewer than 10 employees or under $2.5 million in annual sales), and the specific activities it is licensed for^[19].

A ground-beef package stamped "EST. 410" traces, via the public FSIS record, to that specific address in downtown Green Bay — not to "a Wisconsin supplier," to a mapped street address with a listed size class and licensed activities^[20][21]. This is offered as a demonstration of the method using a real, independently verifiable Wisconsin plant; it is not a claim that any surveyed store sells a product from this establishment. That determination requires an actual package photograph, which is the field team's job, not this desk research's.

State-inspected plants are a separate system. Wisconsin, like every state, may run its own meat inspection program for plants that only sell within the state; those plants carry a Wisconsin state inspection mark, not a federal EST. number, and are listed in Wisconsin DATCP's own Meat Establishments Inspected and Custom Directory, not the federal MPI directory^[22]. Since 1967–68, state programs must be "at least equal to" the federal program in substance, but the directories are not merged. Wisconsin is one of ten states with a Cooperative Interstate Shipment program, under which specific state-inspected plants can also ship product across state lines under conditions equivalent to federal inspection — a real but narrow exception^[22].

PLU codes, lot codes, and the "9" prefix

PLU (Price Look-Up) stickers on individual produce items are assigned globally by the International Federation for Produce Standards (IFPS), a body formed in 2001 to administer a system that predates it^[23]. Codes are 4 digits for conventionally grown produce, drawn from defined number ranges, and IFPS is explicit that there is no embedded logic in the number beyond that assignment — it does not encode country of origin or variety in a way a shopper could decode without the lookup table^[23]. Adding a "9" prefix (4011 → 94011 for a banana) is the industry convention for indicating an organic production claim^[23][24].

Bagged and boxed produce additionally carries a lot code, generally applied under the Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI), an industry program using GS1 barcode standards. A PTI case label encodes a GTIN (a 14-digit Global Trade Item Number identifying the specific product and packer), a lot number, and a pack/production date^[25]. This is the code the LGMA traceback system and FSMA 204 both lean on: granular enough to identify a specific harvest lot, not just a brand.

The Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement

The LGMA is a government-supervised marketing agreement, not a voluntary trade association: California's version operates under oversight from the California Department of Food and Agriculture, and member handlers commit, as a condition of membership, to buy only from growers who follow LGMA's audited food-safety practices and to maintain "a complete food safety compliance plan, an up-to-date list of growers, and a written trace back program"^[9][26]. Verification happens through unannounced government audits — roughly five per member per year — and since 2018 LGMA certification also satisfies FDA's Produce Safety Rule requirements under FSMA^[26]. A member survey found essentially universal traceback capability: 100% reported being able to identify the grower, ranch/field, and harvest date for leafy greens they handled, 100% test their traceback system at least annually, 96% capture the identity of the harvest crew, and 63% use PTI specifically for labeling and traceback^[27].

What this buys a shopper: if a bagged-salad recall happens, LGMA membership and its traceback infrastructure are typically why regulators can narrow a contamination event to a specific ranch, field, and harvest date within days. It does not mean every bag of romaine is individually, publicly traceable by a shopper in the aisle — that granularity lives in an industry and regulatory traceback system triggered by investigation, not a public database a consumer can query the way they can query the FSIS directory.

Egg carton codes

A carton bearing the USDA grade shield must show a plant number in the format P-####, assigned by USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service under 7 CFR Part 56 — a different USDA agency and legal authority than the FSIS EST./P- system for meat and poultry, despite the visually similar "P-" prefix^[5][28]. Next to the plant code, cartons carry a three-digit Julian date: day 001 = January 1, day 365 (or 366 in a leap year) = December 31, representing the day the eggs were washed, graded, and packed — not necessarily the day laid^[28]. Both are typically stamped together on one short end of the carton. Not every carton carries the USDA shield; cartons under state grading programs or ungraded are not required to carry a plant code in this same format.

Where the trace goes dark — and where it does not

What an establishment number proves: which plant processed, packaged, or (for slaughter establishments) killed the animal that became the product in hand. For a whole-muscle cut processed at a single-species slaughterhouse, that can be a genuinely tight trace. For a multi-ingredient processed product, the number identifies the plant that did final packaging, which may not be where slaughter happened if the plant receives boxed meat from elsewhere.

What it does not prove, and cannot from public data alone: the specific farm, ranch, or feedlot that raised the animal; the specific field that grew the produce (absent an active recall investigation using non-public PTI/LGMA data); what the animal was fed or dosed with (addressed by this project's commodity pages using FDA/USDA drug and residue data, not the establishment number); or, for the roughly 57–70% of Kroger's private-label "Our Brands" units made by unnamed outside contract manufacturers, which company actually ran the plant^[29]. This site's retail-map page already established that Trader Joe's discloses no supplier information as policy, and that the only reliable way its private-label supply chain becomes publicly visible is a federal recall notice, which names the actual manufacturer and, for meat and poultry, the establishment number^[29]. Federally inspected meat sold at Trader Joe's still must carry an establishment number by law — the label is silent about the maker, but the regulation is not, and that is precisely the gap this protocol exploits.

For produce, the boundary is different in kind. There is no equivalent of the establishment-number system for a head of romaine sold without further processing — the PLU sticker carries no plant or grower identity, and a bag's lot code, while real and used in industry traceback, is not resolvable by a shopper to a named farm from public data the way an EST. number resolves to a named plant. LGMA's traceback capability is real but investigation-triggered, not consumer-queryable on demand.

Meat and poultry traceability, because of the 1906 Meat Inspection Act's continuous-inspection model, produces a public, on-demand, plant-level lookup tool that has no produce equivalent. FSMA 204, once its compliance date arrives (July 20, 2028, as of this writing), will require better recordkeeping for Food Traceability List items — but even its Key Data Elements are designed to be retrievable by regulators within 24 hours during an investigation, not to be a shopper-facing public database^[12][13].

4. Studies & nuance

There is limited peer-reviewed literature on traceability as a consumer information system specifically; most regulatory-economics work addresses whether traceability reduces the scope and cost of recalls and outbreaks — a related but different question from whether an individual shopper can use it. Two distinctions matter here, applying this project's permitted/detected/harmful framework to disclosure instead of contamination.

Traceable is not the same as disclosed. An establishment number is traceable by anyone with an internet connection and two minutes; a Kroger-owned dairy plant's name and location is not disclosed anywhere in Kroger's 10-K beyond an aggregate count — 14 dairy plants nationally, none individually named or geolocated^[29][30]. Both facts can be true of the same corporate entity: Kroger is required to disclose plant-level information for federally inspected meat (via the establishment-number system) and free not to disclose it for private-label dry-grocery items that never pass through FSIS's jurisdiction. The traceability a shopper benefits from is a function of what category the product is in, not which store or brand sold it.

A low transparency score is not a safety finding. The retail-map dossier documents the Cornucopia Institute's near-zero transparency score for Kwik Trip's Nature's Touch dairy brand — a real, citable advocacy-organization finding, but one measuring the absence of published farm-level practice data, not any detected safety problem^[29][31] (advocacy source — Cornucopia Institute). An establishment number that resolves to a plant with no further public disclosure about its supply base is a transparency gap, not evidence of an unsafe product.

FSMA 204's own cost-benefit case, per FDA's regulatory impact analysis, is not obviously favorable on paper. FDA's primary estimate of the rule's cost is about $6 billion in present value over 20 years (2020 dollars, 7% discount rate), with a wide plausible range of $0.7–$24.6 billion reflecting genuine uncertainty about baseline compliance^[32]. FDA's own estimated public-health benefit over the same period, at a 3% discount rate, is $242 million to $1.8 billion, with a primary estimate of $596 million^[32] — meaning FDA's central estimates show quantified costs exceeding quantified benefits by roughly an order of magnitude, a gap FDA attributes mostly to benefits (faster, more targeted recalls) that are inherently hard to monetize and likely undercounted. This is a useful check against both overselling and dismissing the rule: it is not free, and its central cost-benefit case is not obviously favorable, even though faster, more precise recalls have real if hard-to-price value.

5. The field protocol

The step-by-step a reader executes in a store, consistent with this project's separate field collection sheet. Budget the same roughly 20 minutes per store the collection sheet budgets. Photograph everything — don't transcribe codes by hand in the aisle^[33].

1. Find the mark of inspection or grade shield first, not the price or nutrition panel. On meat, look for a circular or shield USDA mark; the establishment number is printed inside it, or the package will direct you to where it is ("Plant No. on Metal Clip")^[16]. On poultry, the same mark carries a P- number. On a USDA-shielded egg carton, the plant number and Julian date are usually stamped together on one short end^[5][28].
2. Photograph the fine print in close-up, separately from the front-label shot. The establishment number is frequently tiny and easy to misread from a wide photo.
3. For produce, photograph three things: the PLU sticker on individual items; any lot code, harvest date, or "grown in" text on a bag or clamshell; and, for bagged/chopped salad, the packer's name if printed.
4. Note federal vs. state marks. A Wisconsin state inspection mark means the plant is not in the federal FSIS directory and must be checked against Wisconsin DATCP's own directory instead^[22].
5. At a desk, resolve the number at the FSIS directory (URL above), or via the free "USDA MPI Directory" mobile app for lookup by number, name, or zip code^[1][18]. Record the resolved plant name, any "doing business as" name, full street address, and size class.
6. Stop there, honestly, for most items. If the resolved plant name doesn't obviously map to a parent company, a second search step — the plant name against SEC filings if the parent is publicly traded — may resolve ownership, following the retail-map dossier's method of citing Exhibit 21 subsidiary lists in 10-Ks^[29][34]. If that fails, record that the trace stopped at the plant. Do not guess at a parent.
7. Pick 'n Save vs. Metro Market: buy the identical item at both banners and compare establishment numbers directly. The retail-map dossier's corporate-filing finding (both banners are "doing business as" names of the same Kroger-owned Wisconsin LLCs, sharing the Oconomowoc distribution center) predicts the numbers should match; this protocol is the mechanism to test that prediction against physical packages^[29]. No field photographs exist yet for this project as of this writing — this describes the method, not yet a result.
8. Trader Joe's: expect the establishment-number step to work even when the rest of the label doesn't. TJ's private-label branding will not name a supplier, but a federally inspected meat item still must carry an EST./P- number that resolves the same way as any other store's. This is the one place on a TJ's package where regulation, not marketing, controls what is printed.
9. Kwik Trip's dairy: check whether the jug's plant code resolves to Kwik Trip's own La Crosse dairy (Wisconsin Dairy Plant license 55-65, 1626 Oak St.) — already established from Wisconsin DATCP's public license list in the retail-map dossier^[29][35]. Resolving the plant does not resolve the farms: Kwik Trip's public claim of sourcing "within 100 miles" of La Crosse is a company statement, not an audited or named list, and this protocol cannot go further than the plant gate on that question.
10. Log every gap as data, not failure. "No establishment number found" and "plant name does not resolve to a public parent" are both real findings, and both should be recorded that way.

Where the surveyed stores fall on the traceability spectrum

This restates, from the shopper's-own-lookup angle, the spectrum retail-map.html built from the corporate-ownership side^[29]:

6. Cost

What tracing costs the reader, in time, not money. The protocol above is free to use — the FSIS directory, mobile app, and LGMA/IFPS materials all cost nothing. The cost is time: roughly 20 minutes per store for photography, consistent with the collection sheet's own budget^[33], plus, per this research's own experience running the lookup steps above, on the order of one to three minutes per item at a desk to search and confirm an establishment number, longer if the plant name requires a second search to identify a parent company. A shopper doing this for a full ten-item basket across two stores should budget on the order of an hour of desk time after the store visit, not counting parent-company research beyond the plant level.

What FSMA 204 compliance costs industry, per FDA's regulatory impact analysis for the rule as finalized in 2022: a primary estimate of about $6 billion in present value over 20 years (2020 dollars, 7% discount rate), range $0.7–$24.6 billion; annualized, roughly $570 million per year at a 7% discount rate^[32]. A separate FDA economic analysis prepared for the 2025 proposed compliance-date extension exists and is indexed on FDA's Economic Impact Analyses page, but this research did not extract a specific new cost figure distinct from the original rule's estimate — that gap is stated rather than filled with a guess^[36]. These compliance costs are borne by growers, processors, and distributors handling Food Traceability List items; whether and how much of that reaches shelf prices was not isolated in the sources reviewed for this page.

7. Further reading

• USDA FSIS, Meat, Poultry and Egg Product Inspection Directory (fsis.usda.gov) — the core tool this page is built around; searchable online, downloadable as CSV/PDF, updated on a rolling basis.
• FDA, Food Traceability List and FSMA 204 Final Rule summary (fda.gov/food/food-safety-modernization-act-fsma) — primary regulatory text and FDA's own plain-language summaries, including current compliance-date status.
• California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement (lgma.ca.gov) — the industry/government body whose audited traceback system underlies most leafy-green recalls.
• International Federation for Produce Standards, PLU Codes (ifpsglobal.com/plu-codes) — the authoritative source for what a PLU number does and does not encode.
• Produce Traceability Initiative (producetraceability.org) — the industry program behind GS1 case labels, GTINs, and lot codes on boxed/bagged produce.
• Congressional Research Service, Report R48925, The Food and Drug Administration's Food Traceability Rule: Overview and Issues for Congress (congress.gov) — a non-partisan public summary of FSMA 204's history, requirements, and the 2025 compliance-date extension.
• This site's retail-map page — the corporate-ownership layer above the package; read together with this page, since resolving an establishment number to a plant is only the first step.

8. Sources

1. USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service. Meat, Poultry and Egg Product Inspection Directory. https://www.fsis.usda.gov/inspection/establishments/meat-poultry-and-egg-product-inspection-directory — accessed July 2026. ↑
2. Britannica. Meat Inspection Act / Upton Sinclair. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Meat-Inspection-Act
3. Federal Meat Inspection Act, signed June 30, 1906 — general historical summary corroborated across multiple secondary sources; primary statutory text at 21 U.S.C. Ch. 12.
4. USDA FSIS, Our History (fsis.usda.gov/about-fsis/history) — chronology of the Poultry Products Inspection Act (1957), Wholesome Meat Act (1967), Wholesome Poultry Act (1968), Egg Products Inspection Act (1970). Page returned HTTP 403 to direct automated fetch during this research; content recovered via search-result excerpts and corroborating secondary summaries.
5. U.S. Agricultural Marketing Service. Questions and Answers — USDA Shell Egg Grading Service; Egg-Grading Manual; 7 CFR Part 56. https://www.ams.usda.gov/publications/qa-shell-eggs ; https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-7/subtitle-B/chapter-I/subchapter-C/part-56
6. Multiple secondary sources corroborating FSIS's June 17, 1981 redesignation from the Food Safety and Quality Service (created 1977); primary confirmation would be USDA Secretary's Memorandum 1000-1, not independently retrieved in this research.
7. Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002; Federal Register, Establishment and Maintenance of Records Under the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 (Dec. 9, 2004). https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2004/12/09/04-26929/establishment-and-maintenance-of-records-under-the-public-health-security-and-bioterrorism
8. USDA Economic Research Service. Outbreak Linked to Spinach Forces Reassessment of Food Safety Practices, Amber Waves (June 2007). Case-count figures (199 illnesses, 26 states, 3 deaths, 31 HUS) as commonly reported. https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2007/june/outbreak-linked-to-spinach-forces-reassessment-of-food-safety-practices
9. California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement. About Us. https://lgma.ca.gov/about-us
10. California Leafy Green Products Handler Marketing Agreement, approved March 2007; handler sign-on figures per LGMA's own materials and trade press, not independently re-verified against a separate primary document.
11. FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, signed January 4, 2011, Public Law 111-353. https://www.fda.gov/food/food-safety-modernization-act-fsma
12. Federal Register. Requirements for Additional Traceability Records for Certain Foods (final rule), 87 FR 71014, published November 21, 2022. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/11/21/2022-24417/requirements-for-additional-traceability-records-for-certain-foods
13. FDA. Food Traceability List; FSMA Final Rule on Requirements for Additional Traceability Records for Certain Foods. https://www.fda.gov/food/food-safety-modernization-act-fsma/food-traceability-list
14. Federal Register. Requirements for Additional Traceability Records for Certain Foods: Compliance Date Extension (proposed rule), published August 7, 2025. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/08/07/2025-14967/requirements-for-additional-traceability-records-for-certain-foods-compliance-date-extension
15. Continuing Appropriations, Agriculture, Legislative Branch, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Extensions Act of 2026 (passed November 2025) — congressional directive not to enforce the Food Traceability Rule before July 20, 2028. Reported in trade press (Food Logistics, Barley Snyder, Food Safety Magazine) summarizing FDA's own constituent update; primary bill text not independently retrieved in this research.
16. USDA FSIS. How to Find the USDA Establishment (EST) Number on Food Packaging. https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/food-safety-basics/how-find-usda-establishment — page returned HTTP 403 to direct fetch; content recovered via search-result excerpt of the same FSIS page.
17. USDA FSIS. MPI Directory by Establishment Number (PDF/CSV), dataset time-stamped July 7, 2026 per FSIS's public data listing.
18. USDA FSIS. USDA MPI Directory mobile app (iOS/Android).
19. USDA FSIS. Establishment Demographic Data / HACCP size-class definitions, summarized via search-result excerpt of FSIS public data documentation; primary PDF returned HTTP 403 to direct fetch.
20. USDA FSIS. Green Bay Dressed Beef, LLC establishment profile — EST. 410 confirmed via search-result excerpt of the FSIS page; direct fetch returned HTTP 403.
21. American Foods Group, LLC (industry source — American Foods Group). Green Bay Dressed Beef facility page; address 500 S. Washington St., Green Bay, WI 54301. https://www.americanfoodsgroup.com/greenbaydressedbeef
22. Wisconsin DATCP. Meat Establishments — Inspected and Custom Directory; Wisconsin's State Meat Inspection Program; Cooperative Interstate Shipment program description.
23. International Federation for Produce Standards (IFPS). PLU Codes. https://www.ifpsglobal.com/plu-codes
24. Multiple secondary produce-industry sources corroborating the retired "8" GMO prefix (retired 2015) and the "9" organic-prefix convention; not located in a single IFPS primary statement beyond the general PLU code page at [23].
25. Produce Traceability Initiative. Revised PTI Best Practices for Formatting Case Labels; GS1 fresh fruit and vegetable traceability guideline.
26. California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement. Food Safety Program. https://lgma.ca.gov/food-safety-program
27. California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement. Metrics; member traceback survey results. https://lgma.ca.gov/news/metrics
28. Multiple secondary consumer-education sources on egg carton Julian dates and plant codes (Organic Valley, UNL Food, eggsafety.org), corroborating the 7 CFR Part 56 grademark plant-number requirement at [5].
29. This site's companion page, retail-map.html (and its underlying dossier) — cited for store ownership, the Kroger/Roundy's Pick 'n Save/Metro Market finding, Kroger's private-label manufacturing percentages, Trader Joe's non-disclosure policy and recall-driven co-packer identifications, and Kwik Trip's dairy plant license.
30. Kroger Co. Form 10-K (fiscal year 2023), as cited in the retail-map dossier — 33 owned food-production plants, not individually named or geolocated.
31. Cornucopia Institute (advocacy source — Cornucopia Institute). Dairy scorecard rating for Nature's Touch (Kwik Trip), as cited in the retail-map dossier.
32. FDA. Requirements for Additional Traceability Records for Certain Foods — Regulatory Impact Analysis (2022); cost/benefit figures as summarized by Congressional Research Service, The Food and Drug Administration's Food Traceability Rule: Overview and Issues for Congress, Report R48925. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48925
33. This project's field protocol, the collection sheet used to gather store-level photographic data (unpublished internal document, referenced here for consistency of method).
34. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. EDGAR filings database — method for resolving a plant name to a public parent company via Exhibit 21 subsidiary lists, as used in the retail-map dossier. https://www.sec.gov/edgar
35. Wisconsin DATCP dairy plant license list — Kwik Trip / Nature's Touch dairy plant, license 55-65, 1626 Oak St., La Crosse, WI, as cited in the retail-map dossier.
36. FDA. Requirements for Additional Traceability Records for Certain Foods: Compliance Date Extension RIA (Proposed Rule), indexed at FDA's Economic Impact Analyses of FDA Regulations page. Existence confirmed; specific cost figures not extracted in this research.