Nicknamed the ‘king of cheeses’ in Italy, Parmigiano Reggiano is exported close to the world. In 2020, an believed 3.94m wheels of the shielded designation of origin (PDO) item was designed – corresponding to all around 6,000 tons. In annual turnover, this equates to about €2.35bn.
Not all cheese that promises to be the sought-following Parmigiano Reggiano, even so, really is. According to the Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese Consortium, the believed world wide turnover of counterfeit parmesan stands at all over $2bn.
In an work to prevent counterfeit methods, the consortium – which works to encourage reliable Parmigiano Reggiano – has partnered with p-Chip Company and Kaasmerk Matec on a digital label developed to improve authenticity and traceability.
“We are proud to be the very first [PDO] consortium to introduce these digital and harmless labels to assurance an even more protected and traced merchandise,” said consortium president Nicola Bertinelli.
Outside of certification
The partnership is started on engineering produced by US-headquartered p-Chip Corporation, a enterprise that has produced a trackable, silicon microchip scaled-down than a grain of salt.
In accordance to p-Chip, the serialised tracker functions like a ‘digital anchor’ for physical products and is ‘virtually impossible’ to copy or counterfeit. p-Chip micro-transponders can tolerate excessive temperatures, substantial g-forces, and maintain up in opposition to solvents and reagents.
Dutch organization Kaasmerk Matec is bringing a ‘cheese mark’ – made from a combination of casein, glycerol and alcoholic beverages – to the collaboration. Utilized to the cheese at the starting of the cheese generation procedure, the mark certifies the origin of the cheese for producers and buyers.
The consortium initial launched Kaasmerk’s casein mark in 2002, onto which it applies an alphanumeric code and a QR code, to assure the cheese’s origin is identifiable any where in the earth. Now, this method is remaining taken to a ‘higher level’.
An built-in approach
Kaasmerk and p-Chip have blended their systems by integrated the p-Chip system into the casein cheese mark.
“We are delighted to husband or wife with a world-top brand like Parmigiano Reggiano to bring groundbreaking and world-course monitoring technologies to the foods market,” said Joe Wagner, CEO of p-Chip Company.
“By integrating p-Chip micro transponders into casein labels, the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium can much better handle its stock, protect and differentiate its goods from identical models, and have entry to unparalleled track-and-trace engineering to defend by itself I the occasion of recalls or other problems.”
The consortium has done ‘extensive’ tests on the p-Chip/Kaasmerk label around the past two a long time. It will now be utilized to 100,000 wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano in the second quarter of 2022.
This signifies the remaining phase of large-scale ‘testing’, in advance of analyzing the risk of extending the technologies to the complete creation of Parmigiano Reggiano.