Monitoring technology to determine whether food is produced legally and sustainably | Technology



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A new project using technology to track the movement of food throughout the supply chain will aim to inform consumers of whether items such as fish purchased at the restaurant have been produced legally and sustainably.

The new company calls OpenSC and uses product QR codes that consumers can scan with a smartphone to automatically display information about where the product was captured, when and how it was produced, what was his journey in the supply chain, and even his carbon emissions. miles and what temperature it was stored at.

The monitoring platform, which was developed with WWF and BCG Digital Ventures, follows an award-winning NGO pilot project for the environment that tracked tuna caught in the Pacific.

To work, companies that process products such as seafood must choose to attach a digital tag to the point of capture, then back to the point of production, and connect their products in a blockchain platform.

On Thursday, Chef Matt Moran prepared one of the first products followed with OpenSC: a toothfish caught in sub-Antarctic waters by Austral Fisheries, an MSC-certified sustainable fishery that sells its fish in 13 countries.

Patagonian toothfish is an ocean fish caught by high-end restaurants and historically poached.

In a restaurant, consumers can scan a menu or token to follow the course of the fish on their plate.

David Carter, Executive Director of Austral Fisheries, said the company was interested in the OpenSC project because it had taken steps to reduce its carbon footprint and wanted consumers to think about the impact of the foods that were going on. They buy on the climate.

"We see how climate change is affecting our fisheries and we want our products to catalyze consumer climate choices," he said.

Although toothfish is a high-end product that average consumers may not eat, platform developers have announced plans to expand into larger markets and work on projects with the beef industry. and wood.

"The ambition here is to extend to all products that affect the degradation of the planet, human rights and workers' rights," said OpenSC CEO Markus Mutz. "We believe that technology has the potential to absolutely reach the mbad market and that's absolutely what we want to do.

"Some of the products we are currently working on are well below the price of more exclusive fish like Patagonian toothfish.

Dermot O'Gorman, CEO of WWF Australia, said the idea was to create "a whole new level of transparency about whether the food we eat contributes to environmental degradation or social injustices. such as slavery ".

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