How barcodes can help fight food fraud

While it’s well-known by professionals in the food industry, many consumers are surprised to find out that food ranks in the top five most valuable counterfeit markets. Fake food is such a problem worldwide that the growth of the global anti-counterfeiting market will outpace the overall market segment growth of the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries by roughly two to three times in the next five years, according to the Brand Protection and Product Traceability Market Research Report from PMMI, The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies. Within the layered approach to brand protection are overt technologies — barcodes, holograms, watermarks, embossing and etching — and covert technologies — taggants, UV, infrared and fluorescent inks, Smart technology and radio frequency identification (RFID).