Ensuring that food is safe to eat can be challenging. Food industry workers often have to juggle the real need to ensure the safety of their consumers by providing accurate information about food expiration dates with the desire to reduce waste.
Quality control is less directly demanding, because poor-quality foods are less likely to cause short-term illness than foods contaminated with bacteria. Jacob Kristensen Illan, Chemometric Brain, says that nutrient-poor foods can make you sick over time.
Many startups are therefore looking for more cost-effective and efficient methods to ensure food safety and quality. FoodNavigator is guided by two startups who explain their thoughts and plans regarding food quality and safety.
BlakBear: Smart Packaging
BlakBear, a UK-based startup, uses sensors in food packaging to determine whether food is safe to eat. The company says this method is more accurate than using a use-by date and reduces food waste.
The BlakBear sensors also measure temperature and gases released when food spoils. Sensors inside the packages transmit data wirelessly every second. BlakBear CEO Max Grell told FoodNavigator that the gas sensor correlates with the smell of the food and the number of bacteria it contains.
Most packaged foods are compatible with this technology. Grell says refrigerated packaged foods are the sweet spot.
Grell says that while the sensor may seem like an added cost, it is actually cheaper than what retailers would pay for the sensors. He suggests that instead of increasing consumer prices, the technology could reduce them.
Artificial intelligence is also used in the product. Our cloud-based AI model allows us to convert sensor readings into bacteria and odor counts, as well as predict future spoilage, to tell our customers how many days of freshness are left.
BlakBear is powered by Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, the same technology used to enable contactless payments on mobile phones. The technology will be intuitive for consumers. To read the number of days remaining on a product, tap your phone.
It can also read multiple packages at once using radio frequency identification. Grell says it's a great tool for businesses managing inventory.
This startup also produces smart labels that contain sensors and have wireless and battery-free communication. They are applied to a flexible roll (often with an RFID inlay).
The company received the Innovation Award at the Future Food-Tech Event in London. Grell says people “intuitively understand” the company’s story.
In five years, we won't be wasting billions of dollars worth of food because of printed expiration dates. Grell says that the production and distribution of fresh food should be less wasteful - instead of 8 % from each store being wasted, there should only be 2 %.
The Chemometric Brain: Quality Control in a Flash
Chemometric Brain, a software and services platform for food quality control, is available. The software uses near-infrared spectrum (NIRS) for food quality control, particularly for raw material industries such as dairy and grains.
Jacob Kristensen Illan is vice president of digital food quality and data analytics at Chemometric Brain. He explains that low adoption in other industries is due to a lack of modeling capability, expertise, or both. Chemometric Brain can help.
This is a significant improvement over external lab testing. . . FoodNavigator was told by Illan that results can be delivered in just moments. The subscription-based model means that the more tests you perform, the cheaper each test becomes.
Since it is a digital program, customers do not need to continue modeling once they have tested 50 to 100 samples. You can test the sample with a library. Henrik Stamm Kristensen told us that this becomes more and more reliable over time. The trend is to test thousands of samples without having to add a single euro.
He told us that the aim was to make it easier for SMEs to test products, as they have tighter budgets.
This technology mainly quantifies physicochemical properties such as moisture, simple proteins, fats, fatty acid profile and nutrients.
Illan says that one of the main advantages of this technology is the ability to visualize the nutritional value of foods in real time. This technology allows you to know the most recent version of the nutritional composition of a food.
Illan continues: "In terms of food safety, this technology allows us to detect potentially harmful components or compositions." Illan explains that scandals such as the infant milk crisis in China, in which melamine was used, were due to the inability to test for all possible risks.
Kristensen: “We’re pushing the industry toward transparency.” Why aren’t you using the technology we’ve been using for years?
He said the technology could also be used to stop industries from lying about ingredients. The horse meat scandal in France was cited as an example.
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