Italian cheese makers fight fakes with microchips
STORY: Italian makers of the famed
'Parmigiano Reggiano' are fighting fakes
by chipping their cheese
(Riccardo Deserti, General Manager of the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium)
"We use an industrial technology to insert this chip, which is much smaller than a grain of salt, just to give a reference of the size of the chip, and this casein plate is made of very thin layers and is inserted in this sort of 'wafer' and is then embedded in the casein plate."
The chip will contain traceability data
including the place and date of production
An 82-pound wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano
costs over $1,000 on Amazon.com
It's among the world's most counterfeited cheeses
“The total traceability, not only of the cheeses but also of the kilos of product that are associated with the casein plate and in the future hopefully with the casein plate with this new chip technology, will improve the ability to control and also to be able to highlight and uncover counterfeiting problems."
120,000 wheels of cheese can now
be traced by consumers via the chip
