RFID Food Safety - RFID Pakistan

RFID Solution Of Food Safety

One way of raising consumer confidence in the farm produce is by guaranteeing that a particular produce has been sourced from say an “approved” farm. This could be a way to verify that the “organically grown” produce has been really grown in an organic farm, not just labeled that way.

Let us take the case of the “organic” farm producer, say an apple grower. He is interested in somehow “stamping” his produce with his logo, which gives customers confidence that they are buying the right stuff. Hence he puts small stickers on his apples, they are packed in a box and shipped off.Unfortunately, stickers can easily be duplicated and they often are, especially when the produce is exported to other countries. The RFID solution would be to tag the carton with an RFID inlay passive tag which is accessible to customers.How? Does this entail the customers buying RFID readers? Thankfully not. A new application , which is being developed in Japan allows mobile phones to be used as RFID readers. Therefore any shopper in a supermarket, who wants to buy this carton of apples can point her mobile phone to the tag, scan it and read all the details.

What Are The Advantages Of This Systems

The customer gets confidence in the product as the genuineness can be checked by herself.The customer pays the right price for the right produce.

The store also creates confidence in its customers that the genuine stuff is being stocked and not some cheap imitations being passed off as real.

Present Scenario Of Food Safety

The safety of food products is a prime concern today. What with the recent spinach e coli outbreak, the not so old mad cow disease and other such scares, one cannot but feel scary. This is important for most people because eating is something that one can never avoid, unlike say, traveling by air.Hence anything related to food safety is very important for all of us. There are other cases in which food safety may not be an issue but traceability and credibility are. For instance, is there any way to verify that a package of “organically grown” spinach is not so, but has been plied with generous doses of all kinds of chemicals from sulfate fertilizers to toxic pesticides? Not at all. There is no way for example to verify whether the carton showing “California oranges” does actually originate from an orchard in California or a little known Chinese province.

Problems With The Present System

No way for the consumer to know the source of the food. For example 1 have no way of knowing whether the particular apple I am buying came from Farmer Jones or not.
No information to verify the “packed on” or “best before” dates.
No traceability. For example in case of an e coli outbreak, the tracing has to be done manually by sifting through records of various entities in the supply chain including retailers, wholesalers, importers, shippers, transporters, etc. Very cumbersome and slow.

Future Scenarios Of Food Safety

In future the governments & food safety authorities, the WHO & other international bodies may mandate the usage of RFID tags to determine the safety of food in the supply chain. Thus international shipments of foodstuff may have to carry tamperproof RFID tags.
Savvy customers may now demand that produce labeled as “organic” or “chemical free” is really so. They may demand that the seller prove the origin by means of a pedigree trail (similar to the drug pedigree shown earlier) or else risk loss of his sales.