Soon, the packages in your fridge may be able to send you text messages when the contents are about to go bad. Environment Minister Dan Rogerson appeared before the House of Lords European Sub-Committee D (Agriculture, Fisheries, Environment, and Energy) on January 21 to discuss food waste. The BBC and the UK's Daily Mail report that committee chair, Baroness Rosalind Scott of Needham Market, told him that a witness giving evidence to the committee in the Netherlands said:
“We’re quite close to commercial production of a small chip which would go into packaging which would measure the actual deterioration of the rate of food.”
The Daily Mail reports that the UK wastes 920,000 tonnes of food every year. This number was estimated by the Waste and Resources Action Programme. WRAP’s overview of commercial food waste report can be found here.
While the news reports are quite vague, Netherlands-based university and research center Wageningen participated in the development of a wireless chip that can be placed on a batch of produce or meats to monitor environmental conditions during transport and storage. Wageningen partnered with NXP to produce this award-winning Pasteur tag in 2013.
While it may not be economically feasible to put a sensor chip in every package of perishables, Scotland-based Insignia Technologies also drew investors last year with a color-changing smart label that indicated how long a package of food had been open. These smart labels may be more practical for the average consumer, but the computer chips may have an impact on the amount of food wasted by commercial consumers.
Listen to the House of Lords Sub-committee inquiry with Dan Rogerson here.
This post prepared by William Mitchell College of Law student Nadja Baer.
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