Smart meat and poultry packaging to detect contamination

A partnership between two University of Rhode Island (URI) chemistry professors and SIRA Technology have come up with a smart meat and poultry packaging to detect contamination.

Barcodes created by SIRA Technologies for use on refrigerated food products will incorporate an ink that will be rendered nearly invisible.

When conditions indicative of contamination exist, the ink will turn red and the barcode will be rendered incapable of transmitting data when scanned.

URI researchers Brett Lucht and William Euler developed the polymer that is added to the barcode ink which allows a change in colour.

They started studying thermochromic pigments, those that change colour at certain temperatures, a decade ago when a cookware company sought a polymer that could be added to its products to make them change colour when they were too hot to touch.

SIRA Technology chief executive officer Bob Goldsmith said the company had developed a barcode that could sequester pathogens from animal blood and quantify the colony of pathogens with coloured organic beads until the colour emerges to activate the barcode and report the contamination.

Goldsmith added that constant pathogenic mutations made it impossible to keep up with the current marketplace needs and the company's subsequent search for an irreversible thermochromic ink led them to partner with URI in what is now trademarked and patented as The Food Sentinel System.