Improving biosecurity through enhanced traceability of Australian agricultural products

CLOSED: This discussion has concluded.





Image: PwC’s Food Trust Platform

Article written by Biosecurity Plant division

In a rapidly changing international trade and biosecurity environment, better traceability systems are a necessity. Being able to reliably trace products, across the whole supply chain, provides customer assurance about the quality and origin of the product. It also provides valuable information about how it gets from farm to fork.

Funded by the Biosecurity Innovation Program, the Biosecurity Plant division is working on a project to improve the traceability of plant products. A collaborative project with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to investigate the feasibility of their new Food Trust platform.

Food Trust is a partnership between several companies—PwC, Google Cloud and Trutags Technologies. It combines different technology to improve traceability of agricultural products.

Based on technology currently used in the United States’ pharmaceutical industry, it uses a tag to connect the physical world to the digital world. These inexpensive tags, developed by Trutags technologies, are microscopic barcodes. They are made of silicon dioxide and are applied directly to a product or its packaging.

Each tag is manufactured with an optically-encoded, custom signature that can be scanned like a barcode by a specific device or mobile phone. Paired with Google Cloud software, this technology allows for real time product tracking up and down the supply chain.

Data, such as product origin, biosecurity certification, organic certification (and other on-farm practices) and other relevant information, can be securely attached to products.

PwC engaged with the Australian cherry industry to develop a pilot of the new technology with plant products. It is a great test case—as a low volume, high cost export that is subject to counterfeit trade. Australia only exports cherries for 9 weeks of the year—but ‘Australian’ cherries are available in foreign markets for over 9 months of the year.

Tasmanian cherry exporters were happy to contribute to the development of the pilot. They are excited about the potential for this new technology in combatting counterfeit product and improving traceability. Biosecurity Plant division is looking to secure more funding to run the pilots in 2020–21.



Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linkedin Email this link
<span class="translation_missing" title="translation missing: en.projects.blog_posts.show.load_comment_text">Load Comment Text</span>