Make your food or pharmaceutical product security and tracking edible

Counterfeit product is a huge and growing problem that is affecting the food and pharmaceutical industries worldwide. Companies invest heavily to develop and market unique products only to have ‘fake’ versions pilfer their market share and threaten their reputations.

A new technology is offering a solution - edible microtags. These covert, low-cost, heat-resistant and edible silica microtags serve as an invisible ‘edible barcode’ and can be incorporated into the very fabric of a food or pharmaceutical. A vast library of unique spectral codes is available, which allows for the authentication of high-volume, high-value items at the lot or batch levels.

The microtag developer, TruTag Technologies, a Honolulu-based innovator of an edible security platform to address the trillion-dollar global counterfeit problem and the issue of food and medicine safety, has been named a 2014 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum.

TruTag microtags are inert, edible and can integrate into the very fabric of a product, independent of packaging and labels, much like fingerprints on a human being. Millions of optical patterns can be embedded into a TruTag, which is a dust-sized particle less than the width of a human hair.

TruTag can be used for the authentication of food, drugs, electronics, industrial components and consumer products. The security platform will help prevent counterfeiting, enhance the safety and traceability of food and medicine, improve tracking and logistics, and assure product quality.

TruTag has just been selected as a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum. Technology Pioneers will be awarded for their achievements in a ceremony on 12 September at the Annual ‘Summer Davos’ Meeting of the New Champions 2013 in Dalian, People’s Republic of China. Past Technology Pioneer winners include Google and Twitter.

“With their ability to profoundly affect the world’s current counterfeit crisis, TruTag Technologies is a great fit for the Technology Pioneer awards,” said Tom Byers, professor and endowed chair of entrepreneurship at Stanford University, and a past judge for the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer awards. “Technology Pioneer candidates are evaluated by the world’s leading technology experts in a rigorous selection process. This selection distinguishes TruTag Technologies as a global innovator and disruptor.”

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