News Parmesan Makers Add Microchips To Cheese Wheels To Foil Counterfeiters

[Admin]

The chips are now being used with cheese and deployed blockchain tech to track and verify authenticity.

Parmesan Makers Add Microchips To Cheese Wheels To Foil Counterfeiters : Read more

 

[bit_user]

They can withstand extreme temperatures (-200°C to 500°C).

Wow. I wonder if that's sustained, or just brief spikes, like during pasteurization. If they can sustain ~100 C, then perhaps you could even put them in the PCB of a CPU.

Tom's Hardware readers will be well aware of the fight against counterfeiters in the PC hardware, devices, and components markets.

Tracking of merchandise from factory to the point sale could do a lot to combat "shrink" or theft. When a chipped merchandise is found on someplace like ebay, you could confirm that it was stolen and then pursue the ebay seller to either find the thieves or at least shut down their ability to sell their il-gotten loot. It could also reduce return fraud, since you'd be able to tell whether an item was actually purchased, in the first place.

Underlying all of this, you'd need a fairly substantial database infrastructure and good, consistent connectivity. Not only that, but it adds cost to the checkout process. So, it's not a panacea, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it trickling down from high-value items to the more mass-market ones.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I'm surprised counterfeit food is such big business?

That's eye opening.

Wow. I wonder if that's sustained, or just brief spikes, like during pasteurization. If they can sustain ~100 C, then perhaps you could even put them in the PCB of a CPU.


Tracking of merchandise from factory to the point sale could do a lot to combat "shrink" or theft. When a chipped merchandise is found on someplace like ebay, you could confirm that it was stolen and then pursue the ebay seller to either find the thieves or at least shut down their ability to sell their il-gotten loot. It could also reduce return fraud, since you'd be able to tell whether an item was actually purchased, in the first place.

Underlying all of this, you'd need a fairly substantial database infrastructure and good, consistent connectivity. Not only that, but it adds cost to the checkout process. So, it's not a panacea, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it trickling down from high-value items to the more mass-market ones.

If implemented correctly, it could be a good way to check supply chain quality and where everything comes from.

 

[Sluggotg]

Whew! I was losing sleep over the "Global Counterfeit Cheese Crisis"!

Seriously these little chips are great but they can be abused by Governments.

 

[USAFRet]

Whew! I was losing sleep over the "Global Counterfeit Cheese Crisis"!

Seriously these little chips are great but they can be abused by Governments.

Little different than microchipping cattle.

If you need to protect your core product, do what it takes.

 

[InvalidError]

Wow. I wonder if that's sustained, or just brief spikes, like during pasteurization. If they can sustain ~100 C, then perhaps you could even put them in the PCB of a CPU.

Semiconductors are exposed to temperatures in excess of 400C during manufacturing and 250C during PCB assembly. There isn't much reason to doubt chips' ability to survive spending a few minutes in the 100-200C range, especially in a powered-down state.

Most power semiconductors have a normal max OPERATING temperature in the 150-170C range. Stories of VRMs on some motherboards getting hot enough to de-solder themselves from the board during extreme overclocking tell us those power stages are getting to 235+C under load.

 

[USAFRet]

Semiconductors are exposed to temperatures in excess of 400C during manufacturing and 250C during PCB assembly. There isn't much reason to doubt chips' ability to survive spending a few minutes in the 100-200C range, especially in a powered-down state.

Most power semiconductors have a normal max OPERATING temperature in the 150-170C range. Stories of VRMs on some motherboards getting hot enough to de-solder themselves from the board during extreme overclocking tell us those power stages are getting to 235+C under load.

Even my little consumer grade 3D printer has a working temp at the hot end of up to 300C.

 

[PEnns]

Whew! I was losing sleep over the "Global Counterfeit Cheese Crisis"!

Seriously these little chips are great but they can be abused by Governments.

These are not trackers. They're scanned to verify authenticity.

It's like saying the barcode on every item in supermarkets can be abused by the government.

 

[3tank]

Must be right there with problems to solve such as drug and human trafficking

 

[bit_user]

These are not trackers. They're scanned to verify authenticity.

It's like saying the barcode on every item in supermarkets can be abused by the government.

It's very different than a bar code, because those encode a unique product code, whereas these likely each have a unique serial number.

While they're not useful for actively locating the item, their intended use leaves a potential "paper trail", which I suppose could be abused. In terms of surveillance technologies that worry me, these don't rank terribly high, but I'm sure someone could come up with a troubling scenario of one sort or another.

 

[InvalidError]

Since real Parm-Reggiano must be made from specific local raw milk, I'll be happy enough with immitation Parmesan made exactly the same way apart from pasteurized milk and manufacturing from locations more local to me. More than good enough for me at half the price, glad "Parmesan" is a generic brand just about anywhere other than the EU, wish there were more cheezes with a generic international name following a given recipe apart from locally sourced ingredients and manufacturing location.

 

[edzieba]

It's very different than a bar code, because those encode a unique product code, whereas these likely each have a unique serial number.

While they're not useful for actively locating the item, their intended use leaves a potential "paper trail", which I suppose could be abused. In terms of surveillance technologies that worry me, these don't rank terribly high, but I'm sure someone could come up with a troubling scenario of one sort or another.

Pretty much any high-value item will have not just a UPC barcode, but a unique serial number barcode (which will also be the serial number etched into the item itself). As well as loss-prevention this is used for inventory tracking. Check the outside of the box of a laptop, phone, many monitors, etc.

 

[RichardtST]

"Cheese buyers aren't going to eat this embedded label."

Yes. Yes they are. Don't for a second believe that the rind is not ground up as part of normal processing into grated Parmesan. Of course it is. You will eat your chips and you will be tracked.

 

[PEnns]

"Cheese buyers aren't going to eat this embedded label."

Yes. Yes they are. Don't for a second believe that the rind is not ground up as part of normal processing into grated Parmesan. Of course it is. You will eat your chips and you will be tracked.

It seems you really haven't eaten real, aged Parmiggiano cheese.
And anybody who buys already grated cheese should be eating other cheap, fake cheeses.

Stick with Velveeta.

 

[PEnns]

It's very different than a bar code, because those encode a unique product code, whereas these likely each have a unique serial number.

While they're not useful for actively locating the item, their intended use leaves a potential "paper trail", which I suppose could be abused. In terms of surveillance technologies that worry me, these don't rank terribly high, but I'm sure someone could come up with a troubling scenario of one sort or another.

And what could be the use for a certain bad government agency in knowing who the heck is eating real Parmigiano cheese!!

I can see it in the daily briefings..."We have 102 new people in our database of Parmigiano eaters"!!

 

[InvalidError]

I can see it in the daily briefings..."We have 102 new people in our database of Parmigiano eaters"!!

Install chip readers in sewers, then you know the general location and time of everyone who ate cheese from each given wheel some number of hours after the fact!

 

[bit_user]

You will eat your chips and you will be tracked.

If you ingest one, it will stay within the GI tract. The average person would pass it in 36 to 48 hours. They don't say what's the maximum detection distance, but it must be fairly short to be usable as a way of tagging individual items. And all someone could tell from it is that you have good taste in cheese.