Development and evaluation on a RFID-based traceability system for cattle/beef quality safety in China

Intelligent System/Equipment for Quality Deterioration Detection of Fresh Food: Recent Advances and Application

The quality of fresh foods tends to deteriorate rapidly during harvesting, storage, and transportation. Intelligent detection equipment is designed to monitor and ensure product quality in the supply chain, measure appropriate food quality parameters in real time, and thus minimize quality degradation and potential financial losses. Through various available tracking devices, consumers can obtain actionable information about fresh food products. This paper reviews the recent progress in intelligent detection equipment for sensing the quality deterioration of fresh foods, including computer vision equipment, electronic nose, smart colorimetric films, hyperspectral imaging (HSI), near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), ultrasonic non-destructive testing, and intelligent tracing equipment. These devices offer the advantages of high speed, non-destructive operation, precision, and high sensitivity.

Utilizing NUtrack to Access the Activity Levels in Pigs with Varying Degrees of Genetic Potential for Growth and Feed Intake

Feed cost accounts for over two-thirds of the variable cost of production. In order to reduce feed costs without sacrificing production numbers, feed efficiency must be improved. Calorie expenditure has been difficult to quantify in the past but is understood to impact residual feed intake (RFI) greatly. The objective of this work was to utilize an advanced computer vision system to evaluate activity levels across sex and sire groups with different expected breeding value combinations for growth and feed intake. A total of 199 pigs from four different sire groups (DNA Genetics Line 600) High Feed Intake/High Growth (HIHG), Low Feed Intake/High Growth (LIHG), High Feed Intake/Low Growth (HILG), and Low Feed Intake/Low Growth (LILG) were utilized at the UNL ENREC farm over 127 days. The NUtrack system allowed for individual monitoring of pigs in group housing to track daily activity traits. In total, HIHG pigs travelled less (p < 0.05; 139 vs. 150 km), spent more time lying (p < 0.05; 2421 vs. 2391 h), and less time eating (p < 0.05; 235 vs. 243 h) when compared to LILG pigs across time. The results suggest variation in activity occurs across the progeny of the sire groups selected to differentiate in growth and feed intake.

A Novel Blockchain-Enabled Supply-Chain Management Framework for Xinjiang Jujube: Research on Optimized Blockchain Considering Private Transactions

Excellent jujube supply-chain management is of great significance to the development of the Xinjiang jujube industry. However, traditional jujube supply-chain management is faced with the dilemmas of opaque connection of transaction flow and capital flow information, unreliable product traceability information, and jujube farmers' lack of bargaining power. In this research, we propose a jujube supply-chain-management framework based on blockchain. Hyperledger fabric is the distributed solution platform of this research. The current blockchain-based traceability framework for agri-food emphasizes the construction process and ignores the performance and characteristics of the framework. This research optimizes the blockchain-network-topology architecture and storage cost of writing data. This not only solves the traceability of jujube, but also fills the gap in previous research on the traceability framework. Moreover, transactions are innovatively divided into common transactions and private transactions. Private transactions have enhanced the bargaining power of jujube farmers. Through the analysis of benchmark tests, the effectiveness and feasibility of the framework are verified.

Redefining food safety traceability system through blockchain: findings, challenges and open issues

In the last few decades, there has been an increase in food safety and traceability issues. To prevent accidents and misconduct, it became essential to establish Food Safety Traceability System (FSTS) to trace the food from producer to consumer. The traceability systems can help track food in supply chains from farms to retail. Numerous technologies such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), sensor networks, and data mining have been integrated into traditional food supply chain systems to remove unsafe food products from the chain. But, these are not adequate for the current supply chain market. The emerging technology of blockchain can overcome safety and tracking issues. This can be possible with the help of blockchain features like transparent, decentralized, distributed, and immutable. Most of the previous works missed the discussion of the systematic process and technology involved in implementing the FSTS using blockchain. In this paper, we have discussed an organized state of research of the existing FSTS using blockchain. This survey paper aims to outline a detailed analysis of blockchain technology, FSTS using blockchain, consensus algorithms, security attacks, and solutions. Several survey papers and solutions based on blockchain are included in this research paper. Also, this work discusses some of the open research issues related to FSTS.

Toward in-process technology-aided automation for enhanced microbial food safety and quality assurance in milk and beverages processing

Ensuring the safety of food products is critical to food production and processing. In food processing and production, several standard guidelines are implemented to achieve acceptable food quality and safety. This notwithstanding, due to human limitations, processed foods are often contaminated either with microorganisms, microbial byproducts, or chemical agents, resulting in the compromise of product quality with far-reaching consequences including foodborne diseases, food intoxication, and food recall. Transitioning from manual food processing to automation-aided food processing (smart food processing) which is guided by artificial intelligence will guarantee the safety and quality of food. However, this will require huge investments in terms of resources, technologies, and expertise. This study reviews the potential of artificial intelligence in food processing. In addition, it presents the technologies and methods with potential applications in implementing automated technology-aided processing. A conceptual design for an automated food processing line comprised of various operational layers and processes targeted at enhancing the microbial safety and quality assurance of liquid foods such as milk and beverages is elaborated.

Traceability Models and Traceability Systems to Accelerate the Transition to a Circular Economy: A Systematic Review

Research and implementation efforts and investment in the circular economy are rising sharply. With the high stakes associated with achievements in the field, an increasing emphasis on evaluation, transparency and accountability are to be expected. All require high-quality data, methodologies and tools that are able to improve results and to assess and document the implementation processes and outcomes. A challenging key issue in the implementation of a circular economy is ensuring coordination, control and transparency within a network of parties. Traceability models and systems are vital pillars of such an endeavor, but a preliminary search of the available literature revealed a rather unstable and fragmented research field and practice. The objective of this systematic review was to examine those studies discussing traceability models and traceability systems while connecting traceability capacities and outputs to implement the principles of the circular economy. The literature databases were searched on 6 January 2020, with an update for the entire year of 2020. Overall, 49 studies were included. By addressing eight specific research questions, we found that a link between traceability and the circular economy is yet to be established. Sound research and practice documentation are required to establish evidence regarding this connection, including methodologies that are able to support the design and implementation of business- and lifecycle-oriented, value-based traceability models and traceability systems, along with thorough evaluation methods and tools incorporating economic, social and environmental perspectives.

Intelligent Dynamic Quality Prediction of Chilled Chicken with Integrated IoT Flexible Sensing and Knowledge Rules Extraction

With the enhancement of consumers’ food safety awareness, consumers have become more stringent on meat quality. This study constructs an intelligent dynamic prediction model based on knowledge rules and integrates flexible humidity sensors into the non-destructive monitoring of the Internet of Things to provide real-time feedback and dynamic adjustments for the chilled chicken cold chain. The optimized sensing equipment can be attached to the inside of the packaging to deal with various abnormal situations during the cold chain, effectively improving the packaging effect. Through correlation analysis of collected data and knowledge rule extraction of critical factors in the cold chain, the established quality evaluation and prediction model achieved detailed chilled chicken quality level classification and intelligent quality prediction. The obtained results show that the accuracy of the prediction model is higher than 90.5%, and all the regression coefficients are close to 1.00. The relevant personnel (workers and cold chain managers) were invited to participate in the performance analysis and optimization suggestion to improve the applicability of the established prediction model. The optimized model can provide a more efficient theoretical reference for timely decision-making and further e-commerce management.

A Hybrid Traceability Technology Selection Approach for Sustainable Food Supply Chains

Traceability technologies have great potential to improve sustainable performance in cold food supply chains by reducing food loss. In existing approaches, traceability technologies are selected either intuitively or through a random approach, that neither considers the trade-off between multiple cost–benefit technology criteria nor systematically translates user requirements for traceability systems into the selection process. This paper presents a hybrid approach combining the fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) with integer linear programming to select the optimum traceability technologies for improving sustainable performance in cold food supply chains. The proposed methodology is applied in four case studies utilising data collected from literature and expert interviews. The proposed approach can assist decision-makers, e.g., food business operators and technology companies, to identify what combination of technologies best suits a given food supply chain scenario and reduces food loss at minimum cost.

RFID Applications and Security Review

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is widely used in several contexts, such as logistics, supply chains, asset tracking, and health, among others, therefore drawing the attention of many researchers. This paper presents a review of the most cited topics regarding RFID focused on applications, security, and privacy. A total of 62,685 records were downloaded from the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus core databases and processed, reconciling the datasets to remove duplicates, resulting in 40,677 unique elements. Fundamental indicators were extracted and are presented, such as the citation number, average growth rate, and average number of documents per year. We extracted the top topics and reviewed the relevant indicators using a free Python tool, ScientoPy. The results are discussed in the following sections: the first is the Applications Section, whose subsections are the Internet of Things (IoT), Supply Chain Management, Localization, Traceability, Logistics, Ubiquitous Computing, Healthcare, and Access Control; the second is the Security and Privacy section, whose subsections are Authentication, Privacy, and Ownership Transfer; finally, we present the Discussion section. This paper intends to provide the reader with a global view of the current status of trending RFID topics and present different analyses from different perspectives depending on motivations or background.

Traceability in food processing: problems, methods, and performance evaluations-a review

Processed food has become an indispensable part of the human food chain. It provides rich nutrition for human health and satisfies various other requirements for food consumption. However, establishing traceability systems for processed food faces a different set of challenges compared to primary agro-food, because of the variety of raw materials, batch mixing, and resource transformation. In this paper, progress in the traceability of processed food is reviewed. Based on an analysis of the food supply chain and processing stage, the problem of traceability in food processing results from the transformations that the resources go through. Methods to implement traceability in food processing, including physical separation in different lots, defining and associating batches, isotope analysis and DNA tracking, statistical data models, internal traceability system development, artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain-based approaches are summarized. Traceability is evaluated based on recall effects, TRUs (traceable resource units), and comprehensive granularity. Different methods have different advantages and disadvantages. The combined application of different methods should consider the specific application scenarios in food processing to improve granularity. On the other hand, novel technologies, including batch mixing optimization with AI, quality forecasting with big data, and credible traceability with blockchain, are presented in the context of improving traceability performance in food processing.

From traceability to provenance of agricultural products through blockchain

As China’s agricultural output has improved, the national and local monitoring system of agricultural product safety has become much better, and monitoring standards have become increasingly strict. Despite this, there are agricultural product safety incidents which have caused consumer panic. One way to address this is by properly establishing tracking systems so that agricultural product logistics in China can be tracked and monitored. We explored this research objective with agricultural traceability and security in mind. One option that could be considered is the blockchain technology. Blockchain could also be used to ascertain the provenance of agricultural products to increase the quality and safety of the Chinese agricultural supply chain. In this context, this research converged on big data and technology, platforms and other means for product quality and safety of agricultural products traceability. In order to verify the accuracy of these three convergence, regression analysis were used to construct five models for verification of three hypothesis. The results show that based on “Internet+”, using big data, big technology and big platform can significantly increase the accuracy of agricultural products traceability system hence improve consumer acceptance of the safety of agricultural products.

Pérez L. Long-Term Tracking of Group-Housed Livestock Using Keypoint Detection and MAP Estimation for Individual Animal Identification

Tracking individual animals in a group setting is a exigent task for computer vision and animal science researchers. When the objective is months of uninterrupted tracking and the targeted animals lack discernible differences in their physical characteristics, this task introduces significant challenges. To address these challenges, a probabilistic tracking-by-detection method is proposed. The tracking method uses, as input, visible keypoints of individual animals provided by a fully-convolutional detector. Individual animals are also equipped with ear tags that are used by a classification network to assign unique identification to instances. The fixed cardinality of the targets is leveraged to create a continuous set of tracks and the forward-backward algorithm is used to assign ear-tag identification probabilities to each detected instance. Tracking achieves real-time performance on consumer-grade hardware, in part because it does not rely on complex, costly, graph-based optimizations. A publicly available, human-annotated dataset is introduced to evaluate tracking performance. This dataset contains 15 half-hour long videos of pigs with various ages/sizes, facility environments, and activity levels. Results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves an average precision and recall greater than 95% across the entire dataset. Analysis of the error events reveals environmental conditions and social interactions that are most likely to cause errors in real-world deployments.

Cassandra-based data repository design for food supply chain traceability

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to design a supply chain database schema for Cassandra to store real-time data generated by Radio Frequency IDentification technology in a traceability system.

Design/methodology/approach

The real-time data generated in such traceability systems are of high frequency and volume, making it difficult to handle by traditional relational database technologies. To overcome this difficulty, a NoSQL database repository based on Casandra is proposed. The efficacy of the proposed schema is compared with two such databases, document-based MongoDB and column family-based Cassandra, which are suitable for storing traceability data.

Findings

The proposed Cassandra-based data repository outperforms the traditional Structured Query Language-based and MongoDB system from the literature in terms of concurrent reading, and works at par with respect to writing and updating of tracing queries.

Originality/value

The proposed schema is able to store the real-time data generated in a supply chain with low latency. To test the performance of the Cassandra-based data repository, a test-bed is designed in the lab and supply chain operations of Indian Public Distribution System are simulated to generate data.

Multi-Pig Part Detection and Association with a Fully-Convolutional Network

Computer vision systems have the potential to provide automated, non-invasive monitoring of livestock animals, however, the lack of public datasets with well-defined targets and evaluation metrics presents a significant challenge for researchers. Consequently, existing solutions often focus on achieving task-specific objectives using relatively small, private datasets. This work introduces a new dataset and method for instance-level detection of multiple pigs in group-housed environments. The method uses a single fully-convolutional neural network to detect the location and orientation of each animal, where both body part locations and pairwise associations are represented in the image space. Accompanying this method is a new dataset containing 2000 annotated images with 24,842 individually annotated pigs from 17 different locations. The proposed method achieves over 99% precision and over 96% recall when detecting pigs in environments previously seen by the network during training. To evaluate the robustness of the trained network, it is also tested on environments and lighting conditions unseen in the training set, where it achieves 91% precision and 67% recall. The dataset is publicly available for download.

Validation of modified radio-frequency identification tag firmware, using an equine population case study

Background

Contact networks can be used to assess disease spread potential within a population. However, the data required to generate the networks can be challenging to collect. One method of collecting this type of data is by using radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags. The OpenBeacon RFID system generally consists of tags and readers. Communicating tags should be within 10m of the readers, which are powered by an external power source. The readers are challenging to implement in agricultural settings due to the lack of a power source and the large area needed to be covered.

Methods

OpenBeacon firmware was modified to use the tag’s onboard flash memory for data storage. The tags were deployed within an equine facility for a 7-day period. Tags were attached to the horses’ halters, worn by facility staff, and placed in strategic locations around the facility to monitor which participants had contact with the specified locations during the study period. When the tags came within 2m of each other, they recorded the contact event participant IDs, and start and end times. At the end of the study period, the data were downloaded to a computer and analyzed using network analysis methods.

Results

The resulting networks were plausible given the facility schedule as described in a survey completed by the facility manager. Furthermore, changes in the daily facility operations as described in the survey were reflected in the tag-collected data. In terms of the battery life, 88% of batteries maintained a charge for at least 6 days. Lastly, no consistent trends were evident in the horses’ centrality metrics.

Discussion

This study demonstrates the utility of RFID tags for the collection of equine contact data. Future work should include the collection of contact data from multiple equine facilities to better characterize equine disease spread potential in Ontario.

Structural model of perishable food supply chain quality (PFSCQ) to improve sustainable organizational performance

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of perishable food supply chain quality (PFSCQ) and to suggest a structural model that counts the influence of PFSCQ practices on organizational sustainable performance.

Design/methodology/approach

On the basis of comprehensive literature review, PFSCQ highly significant practices were examined and designated. These practices were classified into four dimensions: upstream quality (supplier quality), downstream quality (customer focus), internal quality (process and logistics quality) and support practices (top management leadership and commitment to quality, quality of human resource, quality of information and supply chain integration). The measurement instrument of organizational sustainable performance was also build on, containing three aspects: economic, environmental and social performance.

Findings

An inventive conceptual model that specifies a comprehensive image cover up core dimensions of PFSCQ and various aspects of organizational sustainable performance was suggested. This conceptual model can be used as “a directive” for theory developing and measurement instrument development of PFSCQ practices and organizational sustainable performance. More prominently, on the road to achieving additional insight, an extensive structural model that makes out direct and indirect relationships between PFSCQ practices and organizational sustainable performance was also developed. Practitioners can apply this model as “a path plan” for implementing PFSCQ practices to improve organizational sustainable performance.

Originality/value

The integration of quality and supply chain even now remains inadequate in the literature. Consequently, it is required to have a more focused approach in assessing quality issues inside the upstream, internal and downstream of the supply chain. This study concentrates on the practices which make better quality aspects of the supply chain, known as PFSCQ practices. Suggested research models in this paper contribute to conceptual frameworks for theory building in PFSCQ and sustainable organizational performance. It is also expected that this research can suggest a useful direction for determining and implementing PFSCQ practices as well as make possible further studies in this arena.

Rollout Strategy to Implement Interoperable Traceability in the Seafood Industry

Verifying the accuracy and rigor of data exchanged within and between businesses for the purposes of traceability rests on the existence of effective and efficient interoperable information systems that meet users' needs. Interoperability, particularly given the complexities intrinsic to the seafood industry, requires that the systems used by businesses operating along the supply chain share a common technology architecture that is robust, resilient, and evolves as industry needs change. Technology architectures are developed through engaging industry stakeholders in understanding why an architecture is required, the benefits provided to the industry and individual businesses and supply chains, and how the architecture will translate into practical results. This article begins by reiterating the benefits that the global seafood industry can capture by implementing interoperable chain-length traceability and the reason for basing the architecture on a peer-to-peer networked database concept versus more traditional centralized or linear approaches. A summary of capabilities that already exist within the seafood industry that the proposed architecture uses is discussed; and a strategy for implementing the architecture is presented. The 6-step strategy is presented in the form of a critical path.

Processed food supply chain: a framework for literature review

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to make a fair attempt to craft a framework for the categorization of the literature linked to food supply chain management (FSCM) and to contribute toward doctoral food research. This will benefit researchers, academicians and corporates. The research is based on an analysis of research articles and research reports. The research articles were mainly extracted from Emerald and Science Direct (Elsevier) databases.

Design/methodology/approach

A total of 100 randomly selected peer-reviewed journal articles on FSCM from commercial databases such as Emerald and Science Direct (Elsevier) were systematically analyzed.

Findings

Relatively limited empirical-prescriptive research has been carried out in a food supply chain. The outcome is that the literature on the food supply chain is primarily focused on theoretical-descriptive research.

Originality/value

It is observed that limited research has been carried out on FSCM. Therefore, the authors have suggested a framework for the categorization of the literature linked to FSCM. This will facilitate future research in the area of FSCM.

Modeling and Implementation of Cattle/Beef Supply Chain Traceability Using a Distributed RFID-Based Framework in China

In recent years, traceability systems have been developed as effective tools for improving the transparency of supply chains, thereby guaranteeing the quality and safety of food products. In this study, we proposed a cattle/beef supply chain traceability model and a traceability system based on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology and the EPCglobal network. First of all, the transformations of traceability units were defined and analyzed throughout the cattle/beef chain. Secondly, we described the internal and external traceability information acquisition, transformation, and transmission processes throughout the beef supply chain in detail, and explained a methodology for modeling traceability information using the electronic product code information service (EPCIS) framework. Then, the traceability system was implemented based on Fosstrak and FreePastry software packages, and animal ear tag code and electronic product code (EPC) were employed to identify traceability units. Finally, a cattle/beef supply chain included breeding business, slaughter and processing business, distribution business and sales outlet was used as a case study to evaluate the beef supply chain traceability system. The results demonstrated that the major advantages of the traceability system are the effective sharing of information among business and the gapless traceability of the cattle/beef supply chain.