Abstract: Food traceability is an important means to ensure food quality and safety. For the purpose of providing a reference for future research on food traceability in China, a comprehensive bibliometric and visual analysis of papers concerning global food traceability included in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) database from 2001 to 2022 was performed. The results showed that 3 020 authors from 1 136 research institutions in 80 countries/regions published their research on food traceability in 255 journals, indicating frequent cross-national and cross-regional cooperation and cross-disciplinary integration. China, Italy, the United States, Spain, the Netherlands produced a large volume of research and built strong cooperation. The overall quality of food traceability research in Italy, the United States, the Netherlands, and Spain was high. The research fields were concentrated in food science and technology, chemistry, agriculture, and engineering. Additionally, many research achievements were made in the fields of computer science, ecology and environmental science, nutrition and dietetics. The research focuses included food quality and safety, food supply chain management, geographical origin, traceability technology, food authentication and certification, and willingness to pay. In the future, the academic frontier will focus on three aspects: intelligent food traceability system based on Industry 4.0, food authentication and detection technology represented by genomics and next-generation sequencing technology, and the mechanisms of the motivation of participants, interest game and premium payment in food traceability system.

Key words: food traceability; food safety; research frontier; bibliometrics; Science Citation Index Expanded