6DCP in Bentham Science FNA (Food, Nutrition, Agriculture) Journal

1. INTRODUCTION  Food trace-ability has over the last decade become a well-understood topic, both in research and in practice. In Europe food chain trace-ability was given a special emphasis in Priority 5 of the sixth framework program (2002-2006) resulting in over 14 different research projects, and a total re-search budget of over 140 Million over four years, and involving up to 400 different participants across 30 countries. These projects include Food Trace [1], which set the ground work for electronic trace-ability, TRACE IP [2], which worked on origin determination and trace-ability, CHILL-ON [3] which used trace-ability for communication in the cold chain and finally Bright Animal [4, 5] which identified new ways of optimization in the feed-animal-food chain. A good guide to global efforts on larger scale trace-ability is given in the book “Food trace-ability around the world” [6]. In many areas, food trace-ability has become a main stream activity. Large software providers such as IBM and SAP offer food trace-ability solutions as do specialized providers, such as FoodReg. In the particular case of meat production and related fields, such as animal husbandry and precision livestock farming, a number of efforts have been undertaken (see [7-10] and references therein) to use trace-ability in

  • Animal tracking
  • Feed optimization
  • Managing slaughter
  • Managing the butchering process
  • Origin determination