Wednesday morning started off bright and early with a wake up call at 6:30 am. We quickly ate breakfast and headed onto the bus. We had a long ride to our destination, but everyone was able to sleep on the bus. Our first stop was at Fucheng Dairy, where we met the farm manager, Mr. Li. When we arrived it looked similar to a campus or a small fair with multiple exhibition buildings. We first got the chance to walk through a small dairy museum, learning about organic cattle feed and infant milk. Next we moved into a cattle barn where we saw a cow getting a massage.

We started off our day going to the China Agricultural University of Beijing where we had a presentation about food product traceability and safety from one of the MBA professors, Dr. Chen. Traceability is the process which tracks food products throughout the supply chain. The steps in the supply chain are similar to those in the United States; for example, the produce starts with a farmer, then upstream suppliers, suppliers, warehouse, consignees, distribution, and lastly the point of sale. We learned that the traceability process has four components.

We have just finished our first day of exploration in China, and what a day it has been! Our journey began with a nonstop 14 hour flight from Chicago to Beijing. We left from Chicago at 7:45pm on Saturday and arrived in Beijing at 11:00pm on Sunday.  We were pretty exhausted after the initial travel, so we promptly went to sleep before the next day.