Technology & the Future of Food Safety

Hanoi, December 14th 2016 – Niteco brought innovative ideas to DiploHack to tackle a tough issue in many countries: food safety.

How can you know that your food is safe? How is your food produced? Is your food good and healthy? With the theme “Trust in the food chain”, DiploHack – an event hosted by the Danish, Dutch, and Swedish Embassies in Vietnam - raised people’s concern about the importance of trust in the food value chain. 

“All the stakeholders should be connected. All the stages should be traceable and strictly supervised.”, said Arie Veldhuizen, an agricultural counsellor at the Dutch Embassy. The demand for transparency in food manufacturing is increasing. People need more information on every stage of the production line.

Niteco came to DiploHack with 4 professionals. During a one-day intensive workshop, together with the public authorities, food producers, consumer groups, and other tech experts, we brainstormed on how to leverage new technology to hack the long-time challenge.

The demand for transparency in food manufacturing is increasing. People need more information on every stage of the production line.

One of Niteco’s representatives, Tuan Truong, along with his team, came up with an idea of 4-way transparency system. In this system, producers, retailers, consumers, and audits use technology to keep close communication. A food producer has a barcode model which maintains all information of each product.  And the boom of the IoT (Internet of Things) allows the producer to get continuous data on food as it is manufactured, transported, and stored. Meanwhile, consumers can track the food records and give real-time feedback via an app.

This proposal was selected as the best solution by a panel of judges from the food and tech industries and Vietnamese government. Petra Sintorn, our program management office manager, was also invited to join the jury.

Tracking food from farm-to-fork is not easy. It takes time, resources, and effort. But as long as all of the parties collaborate, food traceability at your fingertips is possible.