New technology is on the horizon to ensure that food poisoning at restaurants as well as spoiled food in the back of the house is a thing of the past. As a restaurateur, you strive to serve the freshest, highest quality ingredients at your establishment. Sometimes the unthinkable happens and your produce goes bad or it sits in the cooler too long. What do you do? Would you invest in technology that would tell you for certain that the food you’re serving is both safe and of the right temperature?
The October 2009 issue of the Journal of Food Science explains the key concepts of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology in the food and retail industries and suggests that RFID plays a key role in ensuring food temperatures and food safety.
RFID technology enables users to identify and retrieve important data of an object from a distance without requiring a direct line of sight. RFID tags can also incorporate additional information about the specific product, such as a specific bin or batch number along with information regarding its environmental factors. For instance, temperature and relative humidity can be transmitted through tagged goods.
According to the Journal’s findings, RFID technology has led to better safety handling of raw materials and finished products in the food industry as a whole and is used to speed up the processing of manufactured goods and materials. This new technology can help ensure that you are serving the freshest, best quality food in your restaurant.
As with any new technology, there are some challenges with RFID technology. For example, the read range and accuracy, non-uniform standards across the industry, recycling and cost have created skepticism. However, even with all of these challenges, RFID technology still shows great promise in the food industry and has potential for a variety of applications:
* RFID tags can be used to track food products during distribution and storage for the purpose of supply chain management.
* Multiple tags can be read simultaneously and can facilitate automated product shipments from a warehouse to a retail or restaurant location.
* RFID tags can monitor the shelf life of foods. The tags sense temperature to determine the shelf life of products.
Tags: Food Safety, RFID tags, RFID technology
