Meet the Winners of FDA’s Low- or No-Cost Food Traceability Challenge
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The Traceability Challenge Winners
A video introduced by Deputy FDA Commissioner Frank Yiannas showcases the challenge winners. And in FDA’s Low- or No-Cost Tech-Enabled Traceability Challenge Webinar, the teams present their solutions and respond to questions.
FDA New Era of Smarter Food Safety Low- or No-Cost Tech-Enabled Traceability Challenge Results
Visit the Traceability Challenge results page for more information about the submissions, judging, honorable mentions and conclusions.
On September 13, 2021, FDA announced the 12 winners of the FDA New Era of Smarter Food Safety Low- or No-Cost Tech-Enabled Traceability Challenge launched as part of the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (COMPETES Act). There were 90 submissions, with the winning teams representing the U.S., Canada, and New Zealand. Submitting teams also hailed from Australia, China, England, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, and Taiwan.
A goal of the FDA’s New Era of Smarter Food Safety initiative is to achieve end-to-end traceability – from source to table – throughout the food safety system. The FDA wants to explore ways to encourage firms to voluntarily adopt tracing technologies and harmonize tracing activities, working toward outcomes that are achievable for all sectors of the system producing human and animal foods.
One of the goals in the New Era of Smarter Food Safety blueprint is to encourage the development of creative financial models that are low- to no-cost solutions, proportional to benefits derived from participating, and enable human and animal food operations of all sizes to participate in a scalable, cost-effective way.
Launched on June 1, 2021 and open for submissions until July 30, 2021, the primary goal of this challenge was to encourage stakeholders, including technology providers, public health advocates, entrepreneurs, and innovators from all disciplines to develop traceability hardware, software, or data analytics platforms that are low-cost or no-cost to the end user.
The winning teams, with links to the videos they submitted, are:
- atma.io provides item-level traceability to each participant in the food supply chain, from source to store and from farm to fork, using Avery Dennison systems and proprietary blockchain technology using Mastercard Provenance.
- FarmTabs is free, downloadable software run on Microsoft Excel that helps small and mid-size farmers manage records for traceability and other farm-related metrics.
- Freshly is traceability and batch-tracking software designed for small businesses, including retailers, manufacturers, and distributors.
- HeavyConnect provides cloud-based digital traceability and compliance documentation solutions, including an intuitive mobile app that allows producers to capture traceability data in the field and seamlessly share it across the supply chain.
- Kezzler uses self-service portals to generate item-level identifiers and associate homogenized datasets at the grower level through simple mobile applications.
- Mojix uses industry standards to link traceability events for each individual item and/or lot throughout the food supply chain to enable a low-cost and collaborative open data network.
- OpsSmart provides an industry-proven, cloud-based traceability software solution to meet food safety, recall management, and traceability needs of a complex supply chain.
- Precise’s Traceability Suite delivers efficient end-to-end supply chain tracking to all segments of the food market by utilizing geospatial, machine learning, and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies.
- Roambee/GSM/Wiliot’s solution uses low-cost IoT sensor tags in combination with shipment visibility and verification technologies to provide end-to-end traceability from farm to plate.
- Rfider is software-as-a-service that simplifies capturing, securing, and sharing critical event data along supply chains all the way to consumers.
- TagOne uses a role-based data capture framework that updates an open source blockchain platform, leverages industry standards to ensure interoperability, and ensures ease of use and data security.
- Wholechain is a supply chain traceability system that utilizes blockchain technology, in collaboration with Mastercard, to trace products back to their original source.