Kicked-off in March 2023, the 3-year Watson project has made solid progress towards establishing a framework that will provide the food chain stakeholders, regulatory authorities and research organisations with accurate information, intelligence-based risk calculation approaches and the provision of tools to detect and counter food fraud. The first 18 months focused on the identification of operational challenges faced by food chain stakeholders in relation to data availability, traceability, and transparency designing and developing the framework. The project has also analysed digital technology (i.e. Blockchain based platform, digital food product passport, early warning system, mobile applications, smart sensors, spectroscopy-based tools and scanning devices) that are currently used to detect and prevent food fraud. The project consolidated the causes and factors that contribute to food fraud, and connected each pilot food chain with the risk of fraud. This included the definition of fraud per chain, the investigation of food chain stakeholders’ attitudes and behaviours towards adulterated food, the identification of the fraud motivations and the quantification of the economic dimension of the food fraud problem. This formed the basis of the vulnerability assessment per chain. Feedback from stakeholders along the supply chain has been collected, identifying the main gaps in food chains and processes, which was used in the development of the Watson reference architecture, the methods and the tools to tackle fraud. Overall, the developed Watson architecture followed a layered as well as modular approach and is organised into three tiers including trustworthy data sources, the intelligence and application layer, and the user interface. The next phase of the project will focus on the implementation and demonstration of the Watson digital technology solutions through the 6 use cases.
