Food safety has got complicated. Can our mobile phones change that?

As a consumer, there is little that will actually prove the transparency of a food product - unless you dig the carrot yourself. Photo / 123RF

Opinion

COMMENT:

Consumers want to believe what they are told about food; often we have little choice in what we buy and to contemplate that it might not be "as good" as advertised is unsettling.

Producers and retailers aim to build trust, the concept of transparency is frequently thrown around yet, as a consumer, there is little that will actually prove the transparency of a food product – unless you dig the carrot yourself (or actually talk to the person who does). In place of the face-to-face verification we have covered products with various stickers, claims, barcodes and labels – but what do they actually do and will they make your can of beans safer?

First off, it is important to remember that food produced in New Zealand has to meet regulatory standards, and food producers are held to these. However, not all food is produced in New Zealand and not all supply chains are straight and straightforward. And it's at times of catastrophe that we need to be able to identify contaminated food and to recall it quickly and efficiently.

There are no silver bullets when it comes to food safety and it is useful to remember that each technology that is applied (to improve transparency) is primarily trying to replicate the trust that you would have if you personally knew the producer. It's also useful to remember that being "ripped off" is not a new phenomenon, its been happening since Roman times when wine was diluted with water and milk with chalk.

Much is made of new technology – invariably it presents itself as something that will solve our worst problems, make things faster or better and more often than not, the portal for this technology is our mobile phone.

Many of us have downloaded the new government-approved Covid-19 scanning app to help keep ourselves and our fellow Kiwis safe. Yet, in reality, most of us no longer bother scanning – even in the face of compelling evidence that contact tracing is vital in a pandemic.

Overt labelling systems (barcodes, QR codes, websites and apps) are designed to be scanned by a consumer to add transparency to a product. With your supermarket trolley full and a screaming child in tow, are you likely to scan a product to see where it originates and whether the farmer provides back scratches for their cows?

QR codes are also used for other purposes, such as bill payments, discount vouchers, ordering from menus, but let's focus on its adoption as a tool to improve food safety.

A label is applied to the food product once produced. That means if the product was contaminated during production a label will go onto that contaminated product. Once it enters the food supply chain and the contamination is identified, the label can be used to identify all other products that may also be contaminated. This includes products in the same batch or produced using the same equipment; where and how that product was distributed; and a food recall can occur.

Some experts argue that how rapid an innovation is adopted relies on how novel it is and how co-ordinated the ecosystem that it is being applied to. In this case the ecosystem is the food system and it is an understatement to say that, globally, it is uncoordinated. Food has become complicated.

Covert systems, such as technologies that embed something into a product or that map the authentic product, provide certainty for brand owners. It provides a deterrence for tampering or fraud and, when communicated to consumers, does provide some surety around the authenticity of the product. It also provides the producer or brand owner with the ability to prove that something was not theirs (this could have been useful in Roman times).

Much is made of the integration of blockchain into food systems and while it will add greater surety to how food products generally move through the supply chain it will not solve all food system issues.

Blockchain's use with food has long been a favourite of Frank Yiannis, previously head of food safety at Walmart and now Deputy Commissioner at the US Food and Drug Administration. Yiannis is quick to point out that you need to understand what the problem is that you are trying to solve.

Blockchain (which bitcoin and other virtual currencies are based on) is an "open and distributed" ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verified and permanent way. This means that if a recall is required then the path a particular product took can be rapidly identified and risky stock removed from shelves.

Yiannis has demonstrated the power of blockchain in reducing time to recall and the "New Era of Smarter Food" blueprint from the US FDA is underpinned by technologies such as blockchain and predictive technologies (including the use of artificial intelligence).

Ultimately the success of any of these technologies in improving consumer confidence rests with the motivation of the consumer to know more and the knowledge of the consumer to ask more.

• Helen Darling has a PhD in Public Health and has been working in food systems for some time.  She is co-founder of FoodTruths.org, a New Zealand start-up that is reimagining food systems for the benefit of people and the planet.