Food safety in the digital era: the case of anti-counterfeiting label patented in China

Abstract

Food security and food safety have always been two pressing questions in China. Especially in recent years, a series of new challenges has made these issues very topical. On the one hand, China is the most populous country of the world, with more than one billion three hundred million people: this aspect puts a lot of pressure on Beijing government, who needs to think about new ways to provide adequate access to food to everyone. Moreover, the rising of the living standards and the huge migratory phenomenon to metropolitan areas resulted in a considerable change of food tastes from the population. As a consequence of that, it is urgent to strengthen food safety control on imported goods and to systematically track food journey from farm to fork. All these changes rendered food safety a central issue, and the Chinese food supply chain and its traceability system developed accordingly over the years. In particular, there will be a focus on the innovative technological tools which recently have taken hold, such as anti-counterfeiting labels designed to limit the impact of food fraud episodes. The case of Wopu IoT anti-counterfeiting label will be described, together with the presentation of some successful examples of application of the technology.