Highlights 222 millions of tons are annually wasted in developed countries. Increasing pressure is being placed on shrinking finite resources produce our food. The European commission has recently committed to decrease food waste 50% by 2025, as well as the US who have adopted a national waste reduction goal by the year 2030. We must adopt a fully coordinated global effort to achieve sustainable food security. Technology has a significant role to play in global food security.

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In the supply chain of perishable food products, large losses are incurred between farm and fork. Given the limited land resources and an ever-growing population, the food supply chain is faced with the challenge of increasing its handling efficiency and minimizing post-harvest food losses. Huge value can be added by optimizing warehouse management systems, taking into account the estimated remaining shelf life of the product, and matching it to the requirements of the subsequent part of the handling chain. This contribution focuses on how model approaches estimating quality changes and remaining shelf life can be combined in optimizing first-expired-first-out cold chain management strategies for perishable products. To this end, shelf-life-related performance indicators are used to introduce remaining shelf life and product quality in the cost function when optimizing the supply chain. A combinatorial exhaustive-search algorithm is shown to be feasible as the complexity of the optimization problem is sufficiently low for the size and properties of a typical commercial cold chain. The estimated shelf life distances for a particular batch can thus be taken as a guide to optimize logistics.

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The effects of packaged content, packaging material, transponder inlay design, reader antenna polarization, interrogation power and transponder orientation on the detection rate of ultra-high frequency radio frequency identifi cation (UHF RFID) passive transponders were studied. The infl uence of individual factors and their interactions were determined using general linear model analysis of variance. Infl uences originated in order of importance, from sample type, antenna polarization, power and inlay design. Important interactions in decreasing order of signifi cance exist between: power and antenna polarization; sample type and antenna polarization; sample type and inlay design; inlay design and antenna polarization; sample type, power and antenna polarization; sample type and power; inlay design and power; sample type, inlay design and power. It was also observed that random orientation of tags did not cause a statistically signifi cant variation in tag detection rate. It can be concluded that the use of UHF RFID for item level of food requires multi-parameter assessment before hand.