How IoT And Big Data Analytics Can Make Our Food Safer Posted on : Feb 20 - 2019

Access to food is a basic human right, vital for good health and reduction of the risk of diseases. Eating many different foods helps maintain a healthy and interesting diet which, giving the body a range of different nutrients. According to the health and wellness brand, Easy Will Power, if we don't get enough of the right nutrients, our metabolic processes suffer and our health declines and if we get too much of them, we risk being overweight and at risk of conditions such as diabetes and heart disease.

But how often do you wonder where your next meal is coming from, who's growing it, and whether it's actually good for you?

We’ve all experienced it – all of a sudden there is a much-publicized recall on a food product, and we are checking our cupboards and refrigerators for those items. How does this happen in this day and age of food inspections and regulations? The truth is, most suppliers (and regulators) cannot effectively track the origins of compromised foods and make isolated recalls.

And this is where IoT and big data analytics come in. As much as they have disrupted other industries for the good – healthcare, supply chain, smart homes and cities, manufacturing – they hold great promise in the food industry too.

Tracing Shipments with IoT

Up until now, the food industry has used IoT, in the form of barcodes and occasionally RFID tags, to trace shipments of products from points of origin to destination. This has allowed food retailers to ensure that they get their ordered products to satisfy consumer demand.

Recently, new uses for IoT emerged – more sophisticated sensors that can provide additional data about globally-transported food products. They can measure such things as dust and dirt particles. They can report on temperature and other environmental conditions that may impact their safety. If frozen chicken is being shipped from China to the U.S., for example, it would be critical to know if temperatures of those product environments went above freezing, jeopardizing their safety.

Multi-sensor devices, such as those being implemented by the EU MUSE-Tech project, will provide data in real-time, as foods are being processed (e.g. cooking temperatures), ensuring that proper conditions are maintained, based on food safety guidelines. View More