Technology to boost trust in food industry

By Rod Addy

- Last updated on GMT

Related tags Ethics Industry

The latest technology could provide the answer for food and drink manufacturers looking to provide consumers with confidence that the products they buy have been produced as ethically as possible.

That’s the view of grocery think-tank chief executive Joanne Denney-Finch in this exclusive video for FoodManufacture.co.uk filmed at the IGD conference earlier this week.

Denney-Finch encouraged food and drink manufacturers to take advantage of the latest technology that reassures consumers about the origin and ingredients within a food product.

‘Ethical score for food choices’

Examples she used included, The Open University’s intelligent shopping trolley that provides shoppers with an ethical score for their food choices. In addition, a phone app called Buycott could run background checks on manufacturers’ brands to see if they contravened consumers’ personal ethics, she said.

Meanwhile, in science, the latest isotope analysis​ could detect not only the country but the precise region of a product’s country of origin.

Watch this video to find out about other forms of technology Denney-Finch said could help food and drink firms provide peace of mind to consumers and why, despite being in a recession, being able to trace the full origin of a product was more important than price.

She also said that irrespective of a “few rogues”​ that breach “really robust systems”​ the industry should still focus on a revolution in traceability and transparency​ to help build consumer trust.

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3 comments

manufacturing technology

Posted by arun muraleedharan,

please share your Morden food manufacturing ideas

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Flaky on fraud - which technology?

Posted by Jo Head,

Systems for safety & quality may be robust, but systems for fraud have not been adopted.

Modern technology is absolutely the way forward but what and how to choose through the myriad of options is the bigger question, now that there is an apparent collective will to go there. An independent clearing house for technology would be a highly valuable asset.

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Really robust systems - I don't think so

Posted by Jim Flynn,

Horsemeat and food fraud are quality and food safety issues which are managed by food safety standards such as the BRC Global Food Standard.

Whilst I agree that the Standards themselves are 'really robust' I don't agree that the systems they use to implement and run them are, with 75% of companies operating a manual paper-based food safety management system that's wide open to fraud.

If you are going to invest in techology that can actually prevent these issues then it should be invested in management systems that help STOP quality and safety issues from occurring. Traceability only provides a recall and investigation issue it is NOT a prevention control.

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