A methodological framework to design, assess and manage food traceability systems (TS) is proposed. The services delivered for the multiple beneficiaries of the TS are listed and featured by a series of high-level performance criteria. We also propose a library of modular technical solutions to guide designers in choosing appropriate traceability solutions. Again, at this technical level, practical performance criteria are provided for daily traceability control. This performance system may be used in a design methodology as well as for auditing a TS. Based on this model, we develop an Information System that we apply to a poultry processing company. Few approaches propose practical ways to design, as well as audit and daily control a food traceability system (TS). Indeed, most of the existing literature is written by practitioners and not based on systematic and repeatable industrial engineering approaches. In this paper, we provide to food operators methodological tools to comply with traceability requirements, designing blocks and performance systems. The proposed model is a set of conceptual and methodological tools to design, assess and manage a food traceability system. Three complementary viewpoints of a TS are addressed. The first one is functional since it focuses only on what TS are expected to do, this is also the domain of expected performances. This stage has resulted in three deliverables: identifying the beneficiaries of a food TS, defining the services provided by this system and building quantifiable criteria to assess these services. The second point of view, which constitutes the subject of the present paper, is technical in the sense that it is dealing with lower-level functions and with processes which constitute the structural solution of a TS. Most of these (technical) functions apply to the information used to totally or partially reconstruct the lifecycle of traced products. In order to have a precise idea of this information, the third perspective of our research, described as informational, aims at building a generic traceability data model. Its purpose is to accurately define and characterize the different data to be taken into account within the framework of a food TS. A computer platform based on this model has been developed and implemented within a French food processing company.