Ultimately, the most rigorous traceability solutions, including QR codes and microchips, won’t be useful if people don’t actually check them as a condition of making their purchases. Imitators can simply counterfeit QR code labels, for example.<\/p>\n
Nor will they be useful if they remain too expensive to implement.<\/p>\n
“People thought blockchain applied to the food industry was going to solve all of our problems. It hasn’t,” notes Elahi.<\/p>\n
She points out that blockchain-based tracking of a food at each point in the supply chain might be feasible for a product like South American bananas, but isn’t feasible for a lasagne containing 50 ingredients from all over the world.<\/p>\n
It can also be hard to interpret the results of testing finished products that contain lots of ingredients.<\/p>\n
“One of the challenges is marrying that really high-technology, high-innovation space with the realities of food production,” Everstine comments. It’s just not practical to test everything.<\/p>\n
Innovations in recent years to make testing methods more sophisticated include thermal imaging, light analysis using lasers, and DNA profiling.<\/p>\n
In general, more testing adds to the costs. And lab-based testing may not be fast or agile enough to support border control officers, fraud investigators or food producers in the field.<\/p>\n
Speed is important when seeking to stop the spread of tainted foods. Yet rapid testing tools may not be sensitive enough.<\/p>\n
Emerging portable testing methods include X-ray fluorescence analysers for turmeric and handheld DNA kits to test olive oil.<\/p>\n
Machine learning is also increasingly helpful for sifting through and categorising huge amounts of data. This can help to create early warnings about risks of fraudulent or unsafe food.<\/p>\n
Still, relatively low-tech responses to food crime are among the most useful.<\/p>\n
With honey, Majt\u00e1n says, “the best way is just to buy from local beekeepers”. This helps ensure that consumers know what they’re buying, and who they’re supporting.<\/p>\n
One rule of thumb Everstine has is that “if the price seems too good to be true, that should be a red flag”. For instance, $3 for a bottle of olive oil or honey in the US might be suspect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ultimately, the most rigorous traceability solutions, including QR codes and microchips, won’t be useful if people don’t actually…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,85,46,543],"class_list":["post-284789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nutrition","tag-health","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-nutrition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}