Promote short distribution chain and local market, reusing public data

Background

A European traceability system

Following the “mad cow disease crisis (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy - BSE)” the European Union has established, among other measures, a “System for the identification and registration of bovine animals and regarding the labelling of beef and beef products”: Regulation (EC) No 1760/2000, amended with Regulation (EU) No 653/2014.

Objectives

Reusing data for Public Good

The project, which is still ongoing, aims at reusing the big amount of data regarding bovines in order to increase consumers’ awareness and trust. Other project’s aims are: i) promoting a short food supply chain, ii) increasing the connection between consumers and the areas where the food is produced and the breeding farm is located. The Project is implemented in cooperation with the Region of Basilicata Government who is also supervising it.

‍Implementation

The solution address the food traceability since it allows the reconstruction of all events related either to an individual animal (cattle, buffalos, sheeps, goats, and pigs) or a batch, in those cases where individual identification is not available. The system can recall the whole chain starting from the first registration of the animal at an Italian farm, up to the final step of the supply chain, when meat is sold at the retail point.

In this way, the complete traceability of information throughout the entire supply chain is ensured.

All certified information comes from the National Database of the Ministry of Health, the Node of the Veterinary Services of the Basilicata Region, and is retrieved in real-time using web services.

The slaughterhouse ensures that the identifier codes remain the same during the whole process, and it is also responsible for recording the destination of the meat. In doing so, it uses a dedicated software module, integrated with the management of events to be transmitted to the National Database of the Ministry of Health.

Benefits

The greatest benefits obtained concern the traceability and availability of information. This, in turn, increases consumer confidence and encourages the demand of local products with a remarkable impact in terms of sustainability. From a management point of view, the project helps overcome a big information gap, since the traceability currently stops at the slaughterhouse instead of reaching the selling point. The Project contributes to the fulfilment of objective n.12 of the Sustainable Development Goals (UN) “Sustainable consumption and production”.

Fruition of information

The fruition of information for consumers occurs in different ways:

• Through mobile devices, scanning a QR Code on the document prepared by the slaughterhouse and displayed in retail points (or on packaged products if the traceability code is reported on the packaging);

• using the Regional Web Portal (https://bdr.rete.basilicata.it) and typing the traceability code or using the Virtual Assistant (chatBOT) that communicates with a BOT based on on Google AI engine;
• using the Google voice assistant on the consumer’s smartphone.  

Latest developments

We allowed all producers to add additional information to the system (photos, detailed geographical location of the farm of origin, texts, etc.) in order and provide their own narratives about their products. In this way, consumers can get more information and, as a result, a stronger connection is built with the producers and the production territories.

Conclusions

The combined use of state-of-the-art digital technologies (conversational interfaces, Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Voice Assistants) has allowed to create a "fun" and friendly solution, accessible to consumers via smartphone, giving them the possibility to know everything about the meat they are purchasing.