Controlling food safety, culinary quality and sustainability with IT

Temperature conditions during production, transport and serving of ready-to-eat meals are essential for the safety of the product and it is recommended that products are kept cold at all points. This leads to stressful routines with many lifts in and out of refrigerators, but also to culinary degradation of the meals, as bread becomes dry and many vegetables looses taste intensity when they are kept cold.
With exact knowledge of the temperature conditions, it will be possible to control the process in a more appropriate way, and the need for cooling in between handling can be evaluated.
In the e-FOOD project, time- and temperature conditions will be collected, e.g. by RFID technology, and combined with mathematical models for assessing the growth potential of foodborne pathogens during temperature shifts. Based on the results, an IT-based tool will be developed for establishing safe but gentle production schemes.
For such a tool to be effective, it is important that food companies implement Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) to minimize contamination of meals during production. The e-FOOD project intends to develop new in-line communication methods related to this.