Parmesan Makers Add Microchips To Cheese Wheels To Foil Counterfeiters
p-Chip micro-transponders are tiny, rigid crypto anchors.
Somewhat of a tangent, but can we stop caring about the location where a product was made and focus solely on quality itself? Like, I bet the counterfeiters make a lot of money by producing quality cheese that taste just as good but are just made somewhere else.
Some foods do have specific, regional character. Is the milk or yeast from the next county over going to make a cheese that tastes the same? Idk but you can get very similar styles of cheese made elsewhere.
That all being said, I can see why calling same thing Parmesan when it's not from Parma, is not entirely truthful, if consumers care about origin. Which in the EU they certainly do.
You have a good point. At the same time, I'd like to pay what I think I'm getting. If someone is selling me something and making me think it's something else, I think that's wrong.
We are focusing on both, afaik. I'm pretty sure the doc/aop/igp qualifications relate to quality as well as geography. It's not just about the location.
And there's nothing stopping anyone from making a better cheese, naming it whatever else other than a trademarked name and building a reputation for quality. So I don't see what the issue is.
Edit: happy now?
"Can we stop caring about location and only care about quality?"
"Technically we are, the qualifications relate to quality as well as geography"
?? No, technically we are not.
I for one really do not care whether it's called Parmesan or Parmigiano Regiano. Good cheese is good cheese.
Can only judge quality by trademarks and place of origin is essentially an extension of trademark. I don't really have a problem with it.
If it wasn't strictly bound to origin but could be, say, at least "licensed out" (perhaps with the places of origin still at least getting a small cut) it could be a win-win-win.
But as it is it's just artificially inflating prices of goods that are potentially just as good (or in some cases potentially even worse) than some alternatives.
No, quality is independent of location of production. Proof of the pudding is in the eating as they say. Reputation is tied to the producer. Quality is tied to an individual instance of the product. Thats why certain things have QA tags. This technology doesn't represent quality. It only verifies sourcing.
As long as the counterfeit cheese meets all production regulations and is safe to eat I dont care. But the truth is the counterfeit probably cut amlot of corners and isn't that safe and if people get sick will be much harder to track and prevent future issues.
It likely ranges. A lot of time the counterfeit is good cheese, it's just not from the correct region. It's not like buying a "Soony Walkman" or something. And if you can't tell it's counterfeit by how it tastes after the fact, then who is this program protecting?
I am ok with “imitations” that follow the same process but it gets really specific when it’s about the weather in a specific region making. You can reproduce the same environment and bacterias but to get it just like the original it’s probably a lot more difficult than to make the product in its traditional “authentic” setting. Unless it allows increased production it’s difficult to see how it would be commercially viable. So in practice they cut corners and it’s not as good as the real one.
This is literally just a type of NFC. The same type of thing that's used whenever you scan your credit card or use an Amiibo. It is interesting that it doesn't use RFID standards, but conceptually it's the same idea of an ultra-low-power chip with an antenna with the only purpose being to transmit a few bytes of data when scanned.
I think the appeal here is the chip is uncloneable, unlike ordinary rfid tags, so counterfeit products can't just clone it serial number. I wonder how useful it is in practice though. Unlike RFID tags which can be scanned by phones, customers probably don't have the proprietary scanner in hand to scan this chip, right? How do you know your cheese wheel is fake or not in that situation. You'll probably have to trust the store you bought it from, but if the store want to sell fake product, adding this chip to real products probably won't prevent those fraudulent stores from selling fake products to their customers. Am I missing something here?
Not near field, since it uses photovoltaic cells with a pulsed laser for power.
Can't wait to play DOOM on a cheese wheel
Cheesing through demons, hell yeah
There was a level in Bubsy Bobcat called cheese wheels of doom... Prescient
I can definitely get on board with this cheese to chip ratio
“How did they get root access to the parmesan wheels!?” -Future cheese hacker film
They were members of the wheel group
they were know as the hacker 4cheese
Cheese NFT
The photocells, when illuminated by a pulsed laser, provide power to the electronic circuits on the chip with 10% efficiency. The chip transmits its ID through modulated current in the antenna. The varying magnetic field around the chip is received by a nearby coil in the reader, and the signal is digitized, analyzed, and decoded.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5896163/
So it's security is that it's not near field based but photovoltaic based. You'd have to copy it's design to clone it.
That's pretty cool even without the cheesy factor
Ya know, the concept of cheese DRM never even crossed my mind...
How in the hell do you counterfeit CHEESE????
They make it somewhere else, and pass it off as if it’s made in a region with a protected name. For example, making sparkling wine in California and saying it’s champagne.
We should have done that with poutine...
omg cheese fraud is real??
Bah! Foiled again!
Finally! 5gs to go with my five cheese.
Inb4 local Discounter süd because customer accidentally ate microchip
They're edible
Terminator: Gorgonzola Annihilation
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Its micro-transponders can add tracking and authentication to electronics and computing goods, product packaging, automotive components, and more.
This statement certainly applies in 2023, with people packing ubiquitous smart devices, many household goods becoming intelligent and connected, and the relentless march of the (A)IoT.
When a modulated laser pulse scans the chip, power goes through its circuits and transmits a unique code via ultra-low radio frequency waves.
According to the maker, p-Chip devices are smaller, cheaper (a few cents each), tougher, and more secure than nearest competitor RFID.
Italy's parmesan makers are testing this technology, with over 100,000 cheeses maturing for the past year with p-Chips micro-transponders in the rind.
This testing phase has been deemed necessary as the years-long maturation process for the cheese, including hot saltwater immersion, can degrade alternatives like QR codes and RFID tags.
The original article contains 424 words, the summary contains 138 words. Saved 67%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
