Food waste is a "magic mantra" used in many developing countries to
advocate use of modern technologies to reduce the wastage and extend the
food supply chain. It is true that many crude practices, mostly manual
in nature, which are in vogue in developing countries in Asia, Africa
and South America in the fields as well as the post harvest handling
practices lend them selves to some wastage which can be targeted under
any program for reducing wastes.
There are a multitude of technologies
available to agricultural industry which can not only reduce waste but
also safeguard the quality of the commodities from the farm to the
consumer table. Of course there severe constraints at economic,
technology adoption and logistical levels to transplant these
technologies. Supply chain is vulnerable to many aberrations
that can cause non-uniform quality among shipments from the farms and
traceability is the new mantra being promoted in developed countries
where field practices, packing shed operations, transport
infrastructure, storage depots and retailer's facilities are largely
automated.
It is here that the new RFID tagging technology will be
useful for better management of perishable produce coming from different
sources and exposed to varying environmentsl conditions. Here is a
take on this new development with exciting possibilities for organized
industry.
"One
of the major problems is that much of our food travels long distances
and through many hands as it journeys from farm to plate. And as it
travels, the temperature often changes dramatically. Vegetables sit in
the extremely hot sun after being picked, for example, and even the
temperature within a refrigerated semi varies widely. While eating more
local food is one answer to the problem (the food then travels far
less), better tracking of food as it is stored and transported
would also allow for more produce to reach our mouths less
expensively.
Today Intelleflex, a company based in Santa Clara,
California, announced they have made this technology possible. The
system uses RFID tags and a cellular reader that includes a global
positioning device (GPS), to help identify a case of tomatoes sitting at
the airport, for example. But beyond that, the tags also now record
temperature and time data and immediately sends all the information to
a cloud-based network. This system has several benefits over what
currently exists in the food industry. It allows companies to more
easily manage produce and to better gauge the shelf-life of food.
Tomatoes sitting in the sun on the runway for hours then should be sold
before those that sat inside the cool airport before being loaded onto
the plane. But perhaps most importantly the company says using the
reusable tags is cheap. At $1 a use or less, ensuring a $500 pallet of
fruit arrives safely to consumers is cost effective even for small
producers. The system also does not require expensive software to run
it, and makes the data available to producers via the cloud".
In western countries the quality and safety of fresh produce are
extremely critical because of the food habits that encourage consumption
of many fresh fruits and vegetables which do not undergo pasteurization
or any other disinfection process. Most food poisoning episodes revolve
around these produce materials which carry the infection from the field
to the market or are vulnerable to cross
contamination during transportation and storage.
RFID tags will
definitely facilitate tracing of consignments which are exposed to
severe storage or freighting conditions and help them to be brought to
the market faster than others. Probably the whole world will have to
move towards such a regime in future to prevent unwanted food pathogen
contamination with potential to cause damage o the health of the
consumer.
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