RFID helps reduce counterfeits and ensure quality

Counterfeit products, such as handbags, watches, videos and items of electronic equipment, cost legitimate companies billions of euros every year. But "counterfeit" food can wreak even more havoc: it costs producers billions in lost revenues and fake baby food, meat, grapes or cheese can be extremely harmful to your health.

That’s why some producers of food are turning to RFID. They want to protect their customers and their businesses. A producer of rare blue cheese ripened in caves in Spain has tested RFID to document the production of individual, handmade rounds of cheese. RFID tags containing the Electronic Product Code (EPC) are placed on each cheese at the beginning of production and the tags are read throughout the production and ripening processes. They’re finally removed when the cheese is delivered to stores.

The information documents the production stages for each individual slab of cheese, proving the quality of the production process as well as the origin of the cheese. Similar applications are used to improve the chocolate production process and to track how wine is made.

Wining and dining with RFID

Thanks to RFID, connoisseurs can be sure they are drinking only the finest French reds or Italian whites – and not cheap substitutes.

Wine lovers have taken RFID one step further, however. One company has developed the prototype of an artificial wine cork with an embedded RFID chip. The chip can store information, such as when the wine was made, what type of wine it is and the grape that was used. Some consumers are even tagging the prized wines in their cellars to prevent theft.