Method and system for monitoring batch product manufacturing

A system for monitoring a liquid food product through a batch manufacturing plant in order to trace contamination, comprising:

• a plurality of liquid food holding units configured to store a liquid food product, wherein at least some of the units can be individually decontaminated;
• a plurality of logical representations of the units, wherein a new logical representation of a unit is created upon decontamination of the unit;
• a plurality of records that identify when a first unit started and stopped feeding into a second unit;
• and
• at least one contamination tracing component configured to identify one or more source units that could have fed into a target unit based at least in part on start and stop times of feedings stored in the plurality of records, wherein the determination is iteratively applied so as to identify both direct source units that could have directly fed into the target unit and indirect source units that could have fed into the direct source units.