Improving Food Safety By Harnessing Big Data
By Melissa Lind, contributing writer
Big data is everywhere. The need for big data has become an issue in every industry, including the food supply chain. Utilizing lessons learned in other industries, food suppliers can use big data to solve an urgent problem; the increasing concerns over food safety.
The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) was implemented in January of 2011. During its first phases, the FDA’s focus was the regulation of the food supply chain, starting with food sources. In 2014, the focus has broadened to include the entire transport chain from the producer all the way to the consumer. Through FSMA, the FDA has demanded deadlines be met, which is increasing the urgency in the need to harness all of the information into a useful set of knowledge and practices. If deadlines are not met, producers, suppliers, and transporters will be subject to intense scrutiny by government auditors.
In the U.S., nearly 50 million people are sickened each year from food-related illnesses, with more than 3,000 of those infected dying annually according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Food producers and transporters are turning to Big Data to analyze the massive amount of information that is collected through sensor-based and RFID technologies in track-and-trace monitoring which gives the food supply chain transparency.
Sensor-based and RFID-chip technology enables the supplier and transport company to monitor conditions such as temperature and humidity along with exact location of the goods in real-time. This allows the supplier to identify exactly where a failure of safe-systems may have occurred and identify it while it is happening — even in the yard, warehouse, and truck which have notoriously lagged in attention and technology.
Track/Trace Solutions For The Food Processing Industry
Not only can RFID and sensor technology allow for suppliers to trace the supply chain in order to quickly implement a recall — such as the 2014 beef E. Coli outbreak or the 2011 cantaloupe Listeria outbreak — with Big Data, used in real-time, it may prevent an outbreak in the first place. This is a massive development in the food industry and can help ensure the safety of the American public.