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Blockchain

Future Of Food Safety: Next-Gen Technologies On The Rise

By Steve Orth
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Blockchain

Food safety is one of the biggest health concerns worldwide. The World Health Organization estimates that about one in 10 people contract an illness from contaminated food, with more than 400,000 dying each year as a result. Food contamination leads to illness, death, lost productivity, and wasted money.

Fortunately, technology to improve food safety continues to advance. The shift moves toward automation and system monitoring to improve accuracy and decrease the time that workers must attend to routine tasks. With the use of these developing technologies, commercial and industrial organizations can help to prevent foodborne illness and provide greater transparency to the consumer.

Smart Devices

The Internet of Things (IoT) provides several opportunities to improve food safety in commercial and industrial spaces. The premise behind IoT is that each device or appliance can connect to a larger hub, providing information about the contents or function of the equipment in real-time. These tools can improve food safety by performing safety checks, recording data like food temperatures, and allowing centralized monitoring of the entire system. In kitchens, restaurants and food processing plants with fewer employees, the ability to get information at a touch can simplify routine tasks and improve accuracy.

Sensors

Advanced sensor technology improves old technology by centralizing data collection and providing real-time updates. Sensors work by assessing factors like temperature or humidity within a controlled space. Older systems required workers to visually inspect the temperatures and adjust as needed. The latest models provide integrated data with the capacity to send immediate alerts when the conditions fall below safe levels. The technology minimizes food waste by prompting quick action, while giving operators the ability to confirm that the food always remains at safe levels.

3D Printing

Testing materials can be expensive, proprietary, and difficult to fit to every application, which highlights the benefits of 3D printing. 3D printing relies on the slow accumulation of material into a specific 3D design. The broad availability of designs allows organizations to contract out 3D printing of testing tools or bring the entire production in-house. The technology is revolutionizing various industries for its ability to provide custom products at a fraction of the cost of traditional manufacturing, often for much less investment.

Automated Sanitation

Automated sanitation systems improve the speed of cleaning and decrease the risk of human error. UV light systems gained notoriety for their ability to dramatically reduce the spread of pathogens like SARS CoV-2, creating benefits for commercial and industrial applications. UV and ozone sanitation improve results over liquid disinfectants and provide better results for surfaces that need to be sterilized.

The automation of these and other sanitation systems significantly cut down on the time workers must spend cleaning up. Industrial automation solutions minimize the risk of contamination, as well as shortening equipment downtime.

Blockchain

Blockchain is best known for its use in cryptocurrency, but the premise offers potential to decrease the effects of food contamination. The United States Food and Drug Administration notes that traceability presents the biggest problem for handling outbreaks of listeria or E. coli. The United Nations Development Programme argues that blockchain’s decentralized organization allows for the accurate presentation of information that cannot be misrepresented or deleted. This technology can provide detailed tracking of a food’s journey from farm to table to reduce time and money spent determining the source of a contaminated food.

DNA Barcoding

Preventing foodborne illness and the spread of pathogens involves greater effort to inspect during every step of the food’s journey. DNA barcoding presents interesting opportunities to quickly evaluate foods to classify their species and identify the presence of foreign bodies. The method highlights parts of the genome that identify a specific species, creating a barcode of sorts that can be used to verify the species. This level of detail in inspection can increase the accuracy of labeling, as well as providing a way to track the origin at a molecular level.

Automated Inspections

Human inspection can fail, especially for workers who may be operating in understaffed conditions. The increase in automated systems provides a viable solution. Visual systems can inspect each item for signs of damage or faulty production, immediately removing them from possible use. The latest technology can identify faults that are beyond human observation, increasing the accuracy of the equipment and minimizing the use of defective products.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize all of these systems and more. AI uses the collection and processing of data to identify trends and highlight risks within a contained environment. The system can handle automated checks, maintenance, and other tasks that were once performed by humans. AI can use data to predict failures of systems or the likelihood of contamination, so that workers can address them in advance. With access to real-time data, AI can also provide immediate alerts to changes in food preparation or storage, to minimize food loss and the growth of foodborne illness.

Handling food in any capacity requires attention to food safety to minimize illness and death among the most vulnerable populations. In the interest of increasing food safety, researchers and manufacturers are investing in technology to automate food safety tasks such as sanitation and tracking food temperatures. While some technologies represent the vanguard of the food industry, others are gaining relevance worldwide. Exploring these technologies helps food safety professionals to evaluate the best systems to protect consumers throughout the use of their commercial and industrial spaces.

Sources

World Health Organization (WHO). (2022, May 19). Food safety. Who.int; World Health Organization: WHO. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/food-safety

Brous, P., Janssen, M., & Herder, P. (2019). The dual effects of the Internet of Things (IoT): A systematic review of the benefits and risks of IoT adoption by organizations. International Journal of Information Management, 51(1), 101952. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2019.05.008

Pangarkar, T. (2024, May 7). 3D Printing Statistics 2024 By New Technology, Filaments, Types. Market Scoop. https://scoop.market.us/3d-printing-statistics/

US EPA, O. (2021, January 14). Disinfecting Surfaces with UV Light to Reduce Exposure to SARS-CoV-2. Www.epa.gov. https://www.epa.gov/emergency-response-research/disinfecting-surfaces-uv-light-reduce-exposure-sars-cov-2

NEW ERA OF SMARTER FOOD SAFETY FDA’s Blueprint for the Future. (n.d.). https://www.fda.gov/media/139868/download

Blockchain for Agri-Food Traceability | United Nations Development Programme. (n.d.). UNDP. https://www.undp.org/publications/blockchain-agri-food-traceability

DNA Barcoding – an overview | ScienceDirect Topics. (n.d.). Www.sciencedirect.com. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/dna-barcoding

James Gunn-Wilkerson, CMX
Retail Food Safety Forum

The Future Is Now: AI Takes Journey from Supply Chain to Today’s Restaurant Kitchens

By James Gunn-Wilkerson
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James Gunn-Wilkerson, CMX

Futurist Ross Dawson has said that AI and automation will shape the future of work, and it also promises to transform our lives beyond the office. According to the World Economic Forum, when AI, which provides the ability to “enable devices to learn, reason and process information like humans,” is combined with Internet of Things (IoT) devices and systems, it creates AIoT. This super duo has the potential to power smart homes, smart cities, smart industries and even our smartwatches and fitness trackers, a market estimated by Gartner to be worth $87 billion by 2023. More importantly, this “interconnectedness” will change the way we interact with our devices as well as the way we will live and work in the future.

In the restaurant industry, we’re already seeing glimpses of this interconnectedness take shape, and in the past year, we’ve experienced major technological advancements that have transformed every facet of the way food establishments work. Reflecting on those advancements, I want to take a moment to share three areas of AI impact that are bubbling up in the restaurant sector in 2021.

1: AI-powered Intelligent Kitchens

From ghost kitchens to traditional kitchens, the “back of the house” continues to be a prime target for AI and automation. While great progress has been made, in many ways it seems like we’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to how far AI can take today’s restaurants. But every now and then, we hear examples of AI powering the future of our industry. For example, Nala Robotics, Inc. will be opening what it calls “the world’s first state-of-the-art intelligent restaurant” in Naperville, Illinois this year. The company says the AI-based robotic kitchen “can create dishes from any cuisine around the world, using authentic recipes from celebrated chefs”. A press release from Nala Robotics states that its flagship restaurant is taking “the first step in the food service industry with AI-powered service, addressing many of the issues affecting restaurant owners during COVID-19,” and it will “provide consumers an endless variety of cuisine without potential contamination from human contact.” This is the new frontier in intelligent kitchens, and it couldn’t have come at a better time, with the pandemic forcing restaurants to reimagine the way they do business.

2: AI-Driven Labor Shifts.

You can’t talk about AI in the restaurant industry without also having a conversation about the implications for the modern workforce. With AI in restaurant kitchens and beyond, the impact on the labor force is undeniable. By 2024, Gartner predicts “that these technologies will replace almost 69% of the manager’s workload.” But that’s not entirely a bad thing. Instead of manually filling out forms and updating records, managers can turn to AI to automate these and other tedious tasks. “By using AI…they can spend less time managing transactions and can invest more time on learning, performance management and goal setting,” Gartner adds.Managers can also use the extra time to focus more effort on the customer and employee experience. And indeed they should: In a recent Deloitte report, 60% of guests surveyed indicated that a positive experience would influence them to dine at a restaurant more frequently.

Looking at the impact of AI on labor at all levels, from the CEO to the entry-level wage earner, the shift, at its best, will be a transition to more meaningful—and less mundane—work. The evolution of humanity has taken us to the point we’re now at now, with food production and delivery processes becoming increasingly automated. This has been an evolution generations in the making. In an ideal world, everyone at every level of the organization should benefit from this new wave of technology. For example, automation can and should be used to open the door to new training and new opportunities for low-wage earners to learn new skills that elevate career paths, increase income and improve quality of life.

3: AI and Global Supply Chain Transformation

From the farm all the way to the table, AI is now poised to transform the global supply chain. From my perspective, the biggest impact will be around driving sustainability efforts. Restaurant and grocery brands are already beginning to leverage AI to forecast their food supply needs based on customer demand, leading to less over-ordering and less food waste to support sustainability initiatives. One company in this space, FourKites, is creating what it calls “the digital supply chain of the future.” Using real-time visibility and machine learning, FourKites powers and optimizes global supply chains, making them “automated, interconnected and collaborative—spanning transportation, warehouses, stores, trucks and more.”

In addition to predictive planning, more and more brands will start to use AI to create incident risk management models to identify trends and risks in the supply chain to determine whether bad or recalled products are originating from a specific supplier, distributor, or due to an environmental variable.With all of these changes, the need for comprehensive data standards will multiply as suppliers and distributors around the world work together to bring us produce and packaged food from all corners of the globe. Data standards will be critical to traceability and the exchange of critical tracking events and key data elements, and advances in data standards will power the meta-data needed to provide better insight for food quality and regulatory compliance, crisis management, and recalls—at scale.

Research firm Forrester states that, in the end, the greatest impact resulting from an investment in robotics and other technologies that automate operational tasks is improved customer experience (CX). “Most companies believe that investment in AI, automation, and robotics for engagement will decrease operational costs. While this is true, our research shows that the revenue upside from delivering better CX could deliver a greater impact on the bottom line over time,” Forrester states.

As a business engaged in digitizing and transforming supply chain operations, our team couldn’t agree with Forrester more. But we believe it will take striking the right balance between technology and the human touch to not only drive stronger CX, but to also create a world in which AI is implemented for the greater good—a world in which people, processes, business and technology all win.