More than 420,000 people die annually after eating contaminated food, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
In recent years big brands have been turning to innovations like blockchain to improve safety, leading to initiatives such as the blockchain food safety alliance. While researchers at MIT Media Lab have been working on leveraging the cheap RFID tags already on hundreds of billions of products to sense potential food contamination.
Now SwissDeCode, a biotechnology company in Renens, Switzerland, has received €2.5 million from the EU’s EIC Accelerator programme to develop an automated device that will allow food companies to detect issues quickly onsite. This is a seismic shift from having to wait a week for lab results. The goal is to provide ISO certified results in 30 minutes, with food company staff able to operate the device directly, as it won’t need any lab equipment.
“This grant is the result of the team’s commitment on different fronts, during the last several months. We are very happy and proud of what we have accomplished as a team, and we cannot wait to bring our next innovation to the market”, says Brij Sahi, CEO and co-founder of SwissDeCode.
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