FNA DEEP DIVE: FOOD SAFETY & TRACEABILITY
Digital defence: Why APAC food firms are prioritising tech investments for food safety and traceability
APAC lays claim to having the largest consumer market in the world thanks to the mega-populations in countries like China, India and Indonesia, and at the same time is also home to a wide variety of very different cultures and diets.
This, along with the fact that many Asian markets are major food commodity producers, also gives the region the distinction of having one of the largest and most complicated food supply networks in the world.
The size and complexity of the food industry here unfortunately also means that the region is susceptible to a wider range and variety of different potential food safety risks which are only growing in parallel with the growth of the industry.
“Food safety is a prerequisite of food security, and we need to recognise that climate change is accelerating the food safety issue in this region due to the major temperature changes,” South East Asia Food and Agricultural Science and Technology (SEAFAST) Senior Scientist Prof. Dr. Purwiyatno Hariyadi told us.
“This region is facing three main food safety threats which are microbiological hazards, chemical hazards and physical hazards – all of which are significantly affected by temperature and hence by climate change.
“Microbiological threats include issues like salmonellosis; physical hazards are natural disasters like floods and droughts which open the food supply up to contamination; and chemical hazards are things like toxins which tend to be absorbed by plants and seafood.
“Every year, 600 million people fall sick and over 400,000 people die from food safety hazards – this just goes to show that the impacts are not only on individual and public health but also on trade and economies.”
With the impacts of climate change not likely to abate any time soon, the best protection strategy currently is to control the safety and quality of food that reaches APAC consumers, and most food companies and industry experts today believe that technology is the only way for the industry to stay on top of things.
“At the heart of issues such as food safety and food security, it all comes back to the same problem – a lack of visibility,” Singapore-based fruit trading and food supply chain traceability firm DiMuto told FoodNavigator-Asia.
“So when it comes down to it, visibility and traceability go hand in hand in terms of how the data is collected, and today everyone wants to have that data but it's actually not so easy to get people to share that data.
“Once problems such as getting the data in the right place and shared with the right people are resolved, then the rest of the issues can actually be resolved, especially when it comes to food safety which involves data such as product origin, safety testing, lab certifications and so on.”
He added that technology has rapidly risen up the ranks in terms of investment priorities for many food firms due to this realisation.
“When we started out, many firms were telling us that they wouldn't use technology like blockchain or AI due to fears about security, sharing, costs – especially costs, as technology is expensive and would affect profit margins,” said Loh.
“But especially over the past year we have been seeing a lot of change and evolution in the food traceability sector, including for food safety functions – people have gone from ‘it’s not for us’ to ‘how can this help me’ all over the region.
“This mindset change could be due to them seeing early adopters experiencing convenience or cost savings in the longer run, but this shift makes me believe that just in the next 12 months or so the change is going to be even more significant especially as many governments and government agencies are pushing for this.”
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Adulteration and antibiotics
Although the various markets in APAC are facing food safety challenges at different levels of severity, the basic issues tend to be similar.
For example, food fraud and potential adulteration has been a major concern for developing markets like India as well as developed markets like Australia.
“The Food Safety and Standards Authority India (FSSAI) recently conducted large-scale testings on local milk and dairy products, which we targeted because of its widespread role in the Indian food and beverage industry,” Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Dr Mansukh Mandaviya said via a formal statement.
“We have to be wary of potential food safety issues such as veterinary drugs, insecticide spraying in cattle sheds, heavy metals and so on.”
Similarly, Australian Institute of Food Science and Technology (AIFST) CEO Fiona Fleming believes that the rapid growth of the food industry, particularly post-pandemic, has opened up an increased risk of potential food fraud which needs to be addressed via technology.
“As the industry grows and exports increase, there’s an increased risk of food fraud, where food is mislabelled, adulterated, or counterfeited,” she told FoodNavigator-Asia.
“This compromises food safety and quality and we foresee that strengthening systems to detect and prevent food fraud will become more essential moving forward, particularly in global supply chains.
“We also see antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as a major global concern, [especially] in Australia as the use of antibiotics in food-producing animals may increase, which could elevate the risk of resistant bacteria entering the food chain.
“Managing AMR will likely continue to be a top priority, with stricter regulations on antibiotic use and improved surveillance of resistant strains.”
Fleming highlighted that it is vital for food firms to integrate data and technology such as AI into operations in order to further improve food safety, stressing the forthcoming importance of this in areas from real time monitoring to predictive analytics to traceability and process automation.
ESG reporting influence
A very significant driver pushing food firms to adopt food safety and traceability technologies has been the rise of ESG (Environmental, social, and governance) reporting.
ESG reporting has become a prominent feature in the financial result reporting of many food and beverage firms, including seafood giant Thai Union and industry heavyweight Nestle.
Thai Union produces an annual dedicated Sustainability Report to detail its ESG-related initiative and achievements, with many of these highlighting the use traceability technologies throughout its seafood supply chain.
“We are targeting ensuring that all vessels that we source from are implementing best practices to prevent illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and modern-day slavery,” Thai Union CEO Thirapong Chansiri said.
“We have invested to ensure that this is done via various initiatives including the use of electronic monitoring, [as] under our Tuna Commitment 2025, we are also committed to 100% transparency in our international supply chain by 2025.
“Thai Union has also launched the Shrimp Decarbonization initiative as part of efforts to improve the sustainability of aquaculture practices [where] a pilot programme aims to produce 1,000 metric tons of processed shrimp that is both lower impact and meets the highest product quality standards.
“The shrimp, which will be fully traceable from hatchery to the final point of shipment, will be imported by Chicken of the Sea Frozen Foods.
“Thai Union is also committed to being able to trace tuna back to the fishing vessel or group of vessels [via our] robust management system to track and trace tuna where all of the tuna can be followed from production back to capture.”
Nestle also publishes an annual Creating Shared Value and Sustainability Report, and has announced that 36.2% of all the key ingredients it uses are ‘Responsibly Sourced’.
According to its Responsible Sourcing Standards, all of Nestle’s direct suppliers must ‘have in place traceability systems for materials and ingredients that enable assessment of human rights and environmental risks’ and all animal-based products must have ‘an effective traceability system of animal products along the supply chain in place’.
Recent regulatory developments have also made it necessary for food firms to increase their focus on technology – in particular, traceability technology is a major component of the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), and without this firms would lose access to the EU market.
“Traceability to the plot of land [on which the food ingredient was planted] is necessary to demonstrate that there is no deforestation occurring at a specific location,” the European Commission said via a formal statement.
“Operators must collect and provide in their due diligence statement geographic coordinates of the plots of land where the commodities were produced or harvested [and] products that do not meet the traceability requirements may not be placed on the EU market or exported.”
“These traceability requirements apply to each batch of imported, exported or traded commodities.”
Future of this tech
Even though there are many food safety and traceability technologies already on the market, Fleming believes that a lack of collaboration is still impeding real advancement in the sector.
“A missing piece potentially is interoperability as currently, many food safety and traceability technologies operate in silos, making it difficult to share and integrate data across different platforms and stakeholders,” she said.
“So some things that definitely still need to be done include developing standardized data protocols and enhancing interoperability across the supply chain.
“This would be the start to boost efficiency, facilitate more comprehensive risk management, and ensure a unified approach to food safety.”
Newer forms of technology are looking at moving beyond traceability of a box of food products to tracing the actual food itself, such as Singapore’s Natural Trace with its molecular tracing solution.
“Most existing technologies like barcodes and RFID still have some limitations as it is not practical to imprint these on a fruit or a coffee bean – this is where our technology NaturalTag comes in,” Natural Trace CCO Dr Julia Lee told us.
“This is a food ingredient tag that can be added in tiny amounts into a product at various points along the supply chain, and traceability comes via our NaturalDetect technology which can map results to the NaturalCloud platform.
“This creates a digital link through the food supply chain that can enable both comprehensive monitoring and authenticity verification to prevent potential food fraud.”
Loh added that the vast potential applications and benefits of food safety and traceability technologies bode well for upcoming APAC growth, and that there is strong potential for AI to play an increasingly important role here.
“There still tends to be concern about AI affecting the future and taking jobs away but in reality, it’s about new opportunities being created within the food industry,” he said.
“The main role that AI and technologies whether in food safety or traceability are going to be playing are still going to be things that are more manual.
“What’s going to be happening to those people who were doing the manual tasks like checking that the dates or the fruit colours are correct, is they will now be moving to a different part of the supply chain which AI cannot replace, such as in the store or dealing with consumers – essentially being put to work more efficiently, and that is how AI will change the business environment.”
