Imagen explicativa de la trazabilidad del jamón de Teruel

Traceability of Jamón de Teruel PDO

Checks on a product with a Protected Designation of Origin such as Jamón de Teruel should be very strict. The job of the Teruel Ham Control Board is to check that each and every one of the quality requirements and parameters in the standard are being met. For the time being, this entity is also the only ENAC-approved ham control board.

The best tool to guarantee product origin and handling is traceability, defined by the AECOC (Association of Manufacturers and Distributors) Food Safety Committee as the “pre-set, self-sufficient procedures that reveal the background, location and path of a product or batch of products throughout the supply chain at any given time, using determined tools”. Traceability tells us about each and every one of the transformation processes undertaken by the ham, in this case.

When we buy a Teruel ham, in addition to the actual commercial brand label, the branding and the certifying band, consumers are provided with information that, although coded, can tell them about the origin of this piece of meat. This is the traceability code marked in ink on the ham skin, a 9 figure number that can be broken down as follows:

– The first figure refers to the abattoir.

– The second and third figure refer to the week of slaughter (this might match the MAPA stamp if it was salted in the slaughter week or differ by one unit if a pig was slaughtered on a Friday, for example, and salted the following week).

– The fourth, fifth and sixth figures identify the farm.

– The last three figures show the order in which the leg was classified on this day.

At first glance, it is very complicated to extract the information but consumers can be sure that, in the event of a problem with their ham, this code could even determine which farm the pig came from.

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