SBIR Phase I: Development of a biological barcode-based method for improved food traceability

这项小企业创新研究（SBIR）项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是提供一种快速识别受污染农产品来源的方法。2011年，美国疾病控制与预防中心估计，美国每年有3000人死于食源性疾病。包括召回和其他成本在内，美国经济每年的总成本超过700亿美元。快速和准确地追踪受污染食品来源的能力至关重要，因为它允许实施有针对性的措施以防止再次发生，并且还减少了为保护公众健康而必须进行的大规模和昂贵的召回。此外，出于经济动机的食品掺假和欺诈正在成为非常严重的问题，全球食品工业每年的成本估计为150亿美元。在许多情况下，检测欺诈或掺假要么是不可能的，要么是极其昂贵或耗时的，因此是不切实际的。食品欺诈损害了消费者对食品供应完整性的信任，削弱了生产商和零售商保证纯度和品牌或区分其产品的能力。该SBIR一期项目旨在建立一种基于生物条形码的方法的可行性，以快速有效地识别食品来源，并检测欺诈或掺假液体商品。现有的食品追踪技术通常是无效的，因为可追踪信息被印在包装上，几乎总是在产品到达消费者手中之前被丢弃。追溯调查非常繁琐，非常耗时，而且往往没有结论。生物工程的进步已经产生了一种材料，这种材料能够开发出一种非常高效、有效和低成本的食品追踪系统。这提供了沿着供应链中的多个步骤跟踪食品的机会，并最终通过直接在许多食品上应用产品标识到消费者手中，成本大大低于任何其他方法。目的是通过应用生物标记来追踪近年来导致疫情爆发的一种食品，来证明这种方法的可行性。该食品将通过供应链进行跟踪，以证明示踪剂的稳定性，以及识别来自不同来源的混合产品来源的能力。该技术还将用于证明其检测橄榄油掺假的可行性。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is to provide a rapid method to identify the source of contaminated produce. In 2011, the CDC estimated that in the USA 3,000 deaths are caused each year due to foodborne illness. The total annual cost to the U.S. economy, including recalls and other costs exceeds $70 billion. The ability to rapidly and accurately trace the origin of contaminated food is critical because it allows the implementation of targeted measures to prevent recurrences, and also reduces the need for massive and costly recalls that are otherwise necessary to protect public health. In addition, economically motivated food adulteration and fraud are becoming very serious problems and the annual cost to the global food industry is estimated to be $15 billion. In many cases, detection of fraud or adulteration is either impossible or extremely costly or time consuming, and, thus, impractical. Food fraud damages the consumers' trust in the integrity of the food supply and diminishes the ability of producers and retailers to guarantee the purity and to brand or differentiate their products. This SBIR Phase I project proposes to establish the feasibility of developing a biological barcode-based method to rapidly and effectively identify the source of food, and detect fraud or adulteration of liquid goods. Existing food-tracing technologies are generally ineffective because traceability information is printed on the packaging, which is almost always discarded before the product reaches the consumer. Trace back investigations are cumbersome, very time consuming and often inconclusive. Advances in bio-engineering have produced a material that enables the development of a very efficient, effective, and low cost food tracing system. This offers the opportunity to trace food along multiple steps in the supply chain, and ultimately to the consumer by applying the product identification directly on many food products, at a cost significantly lower than any other method. The goal is to demonstrate the feasibility of this method by applying biological markers to trace one food item that has been the cause of outbreaks in recent years. This food will be tracked through the supply chain to demonstrate stability of the tracers, as well as the ability to identify the source of co-mingled products from different origins. This technology also will be used to demonstrate its feasibility for detection of adulteration of olive oil.