With the growing concern about food safety, the traditional food and beverage production has been unable to meet user needs. In order to ensure food safety, many countries (regions) began to use RFID technology and the extension of RFID equipment, through the enhancement of traceability and regulatory capacity, a strong impetus to food safety supervision.
RFID technology can be used in the food industry in a number of links inside, can ensure the safety of food, effective control of food-borne infectious diseases, exclude the import and export of food in China some of the laws and regulations of the constraints for the development of the food industry provides a technical guarantee.
RFID technology realizes the monitoring of the whole process of food production from the source, which can be realized in the following aspects:
1. Traceability
Each piece of food is affixed with the corresponding RFID electronic tags, RFID tags recorded within the food production source producer, category, grade and other information, the system of food throughout the production process for the whole process of tracking, and centralized backup of the data to the quality inspection center, for government departments and enterprises to provide the basis for traceability data.
2. Fully automatic identification
After adopting RFID tag technology, the information of each link is fully automatic identification, and the production information of each link can be obtained automatically through fixed or handheld read-write.
3.Global monitoring
From the source of food to the table throughout the chain of each link for real-time monitoring.
4.Security
The use of unique RFID passive tags, and each tag has been encrypted, can not be copied, you can ensure the safety and stability of the RFID tag identification link, so that food safety more assured.
Food is directly related to people's health, the application of RFID technology in the food industry can effectively ensure that the real-time information collection and accuracy, improve food safety and monitoring and management level, coordination of all aspects of the food chain, increasing the transparency of people's understanding of the food, to ensure food safety.
Food Quality Tracking and Traceability
RFID technology ensures high quality data exchange along the food supply chain, enabling the implementation of a complete “at source” food tracking program and the ability to provide complete transparency in the food supply chain. RFID systems provide a link between the food and the source of the food in the food chain, ensuring that the source of the food is clearly identified and traced back to the specific animal or plant and farm, thus enabling quality control and traceability from “farm to fork”. RFID systems can provide a link between food and its source in the food chain, ensuring clarity of the food source to trace it back to specific animals or plants and farms, thus realizing “farm-to-table” quality monitoring and traceability.
Shanghai has established a pork monitoring system based on RFID technology, where pigs are tagged with RFID ear tags to record their feed, medical history, medication, herd transfer, quarantine and other information. In the main city border crossing and slaughterhouse using RFID tags for “point to point” supervision, to ensure that pigs enter the designated slaughterhouse. In the wholesale market, through the electronic tag, records into the trading of pork origin, trading time, food and agricultural products safety test results.
Beijing Food Safety Supervision and Coordination Office proposed in 2006: in the key breeding bases through the animal products wearing ear tags, foot tags, in the slaughter, production and circulation of all aspects of the use of RFID technology, in order to realize the breeding of livestock products, the acquisition of slaughtering, slaughtering, splitting, transportation, sales of information to record the formation of traceability files, so as to facilitate tracking.
Food Quality Monitoring
In the processing and storage of food, temperature, humidity and other factors have a great impact on the quality of food, record analysis of these factors is very important. RFID technology combined with sensor technology, you can sense the surrounding items and the environment temperature, humidity and light and other state information, to facilitate the transmission of these state information and its changes.
A food service marketing company in North America has completed the low-temperature storage and transportation system of RFID technology and sensing system testing, indicating that RFID technology in the food transportation process has the ability to monitor the temperature and environmental conditions.
A Japanese company has carried out a test of using RFID technology to keep sake fresh, and to grasp changes in the quality of rice wine by monitoring temperature changes during transportation.
Food anti-counterfeiting applications
All along, the domestic and foreign lawless elements for profiteering, specializing in imitation of famous and excellent products, substituting good for bad, fake for real, forming a certain market of counterfeit and shoddy goods, seriously disrupting the social market and economic order, shoddy food in the famous wine, health products, famous and excellent specialties are mostly.
Through the RFID tag's globally unique ID number, the anti-counterfeiting of food can be realized. In addition, through RFID technology can realize the anti-counterfeiting and traceability of food, reduce the phenomenon of food counterfeiting and impersonation, and improve consumer trust in food.
RFID read-write has a physical interface that is not directly open to end-users to ensure its own security; there is a mutual authentication process between RFID read-write and RFID tags; RFID tags are easy to integrate into a variety of commodities, which can greatly improve the difficulty and cost of counterfeiting by counterfeiters.
The RFID Research Center of the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed an RFID anti-counterfeiting system for alcohol, which consists of specially designed caps and bottles, communication networks, RFID readers and anti-counterfeiting database servers.
In California, Sea Smoke Cellars winery puts RFID tags on wine barrels and then traces the information of wine to prevent tampering and so on.
Food logistics management
RFID technology applied to food logistics management, can give full play to RFID technology, long-distance range identification, multi-label simultaneous processing characteristics, greatly improve the food sorting capacity, processing speed and accuracy, reduce the huge losses caused by misdelivery or loss.
Food other applications
In addition, RFID technology can also quickly find out why the product is unqualified, and improve product quality in a timely manner; RFID technology can be used for the control of processing objects and processing stations, to ensure that the product's precise formula for fine control, improve product quality; RFID technology can also be used in the feeding industry, can be used to identify the animal, record and control plague, etc., mainly collar RFID tags, RFID Button type electronic ear tag, ear injection type electronic tag as well as through the esophagus placed in the rumen electronic tags and other ways to record animal information.
RFID technology for the food industry safety of the core needs to provide a reliable solution. RFID system can not only real-time monitoring of all phases of production, but also can realize the process transparency and ensure to improve the safety of food. At present, the food industry in inventory management, manufacturing, product traceability and other aspects of the still exist a lot of digital intelligence upgrade space.
