Mobile ingredient tracing system could prevent food fraud

A prototype app developed by researchers at the University of Tokyo could provide farmers, producers and growers with a way to provide full transparency along the supply chain from farm to fork.

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kadmy | bigstockphoto
kadmy | bigstockphoto

A prototype app developed by researchers at the University of Tokyo could provide farmers, producers and growers with a way to provide full transparency along the supply chain from farm to fork.

This research was a collaborative project with Complex Systems Institute of Paris Île-de-France, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).

“Our motivation was to design a food tracking system that is cheap for smallholder farmers, convenient for consumers, and can prevent food fraud,” said Kaiyuan Lin, a third-year doctoral student at the University of Tokyo and first author of the research study published in Nature Food.

Today’s consumers want to know more about how their food is made, where the ingredients come from and the culture behind a product or company – a trend that was accelerated by the COVID-19 global pandemic.

How it works

The tracking system begins with the harvest or processing of any ingredient, like a whole turkey, eggs or even chicken wings. Farmers can open the app, enter details about the item and then create and print a QR code to attach to the ingredient packaging. It can even be used to turn long list of ingredients into a single code, for example, in meal kits.

The QR code is updated throughout the supply chain. It can include information about how an ingredient was grown, where, when and how it was transported to market and even how long and where it was stored before it was sold to a consumer.

Counterfeit QR codes can be caught quickly and easily because farmers can opt-in to receive notifications about any ingredients that started at their facility. This prevents food fraud and false claims.

Compared to blockchain, another digital technology commonly used to increase transparency, the mobile ingredient tracing system requires less energy and storage, provides real-time results and should be easier to scale up especially for resource-poor enterprises. The app was designed using open-source software and relies on a user’s computer or phone to store the data.

“My mission is to make sure the system is not lying to you. Data are recorded in our digital system only when transactions happen person-to-person in the real, physical world, so there can be no fraud,” said Lin.

“The current barcode system means that every day of the year, forever, when you buy the same product, it will have the same barcode. Our system means small producers making small batches can generate a new QR code for each batch.”

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