Project description
Handheld device reduces meat and fish food waste
Nearly 5 Mt/year of perfectly edible meat and fish are wasted within Europe due to incorrect freshness evaluations and shelf-life estimations set by the industry. The EU-funded Food waste reduction project will address this issue by developing a user-friendly, handheld device that measures the freshness of meat and fish and predicts their precise expiration date. The device measures the concentration of volatiles indicative of freshness and correlates them with values in a pre-obtained database containing prediction curves to allow meat and fish handling SMEs to easily and correctly determine expiration dates. This information regarding precise expiration dates can then be transmitted down the value chain to prevent these high-value and highly unsustainable products from going to waste.
Objective
20% of all meat and 35% of all fish produced is wasted. In Europe 5 mio tons of perfectly good meat and fish is wasted due to incorrect freshness evaluations and shelf-life estimations set by the industry. This corresponds to 17 bil € and 85 mio tons of CO2. Currently shelf-life is estimated from human senses or rule of tomb, but AmiNIC is developing a handheld user-friendly device that within seconds measures freshness and predicts correct and precise expiration dates for meat and fish. The device measures the concentration of freshness indicative volatiles and correlate the level of these with values in a pre-obtained database, containing prediction-curves, that will enable meat and fish handlings SMEs to easily predict correct expiration dates. The effect of correct and precise expiration dates will transmit down the value chain and prevent large amounts of these high-value and highly unsustainable products from being wasted. Quantitative and reliable assessment methods are in high demand, but development of such a game-changing technology requires highly-skilled employees, which, for SMEs, is hard to acquire. For AmiNIC, competences and expertise within in nano-sensing technologies is needed and this is only feasible with the means to employ suitable candidates within this field. This candidate will be trained in areas relevant to the development which will lead to fabrication of a novel and substantially improved sensing device and validation of this against current expiration date evaluation methods: human sensory analysis. AmiNIC is, and has been, collaborating closely with Universities and RTOs on the development and validation of this Key Enabling Technology, but competences and knowledge within nanosized semiconductor sensing units is necessary. The very topic-specific skills we need are not available on the national level and we will have to be acquired them from elsewhere in order for us to bringing this truly innovative product to the market by 2021.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
CSA-LSP - Coordination and support action Lump sumCoordinator
5500 MIDDELFART
Denmark
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.