Honest cheese and transparent beer: Meet The Food Detectives making farm products you can trust
Europe's top food safety experts are joining forces to crack down on fraud. Euronews is following them in this special series called The Food Detectives. In Episode 3, we meet the Finnish team making farm products you can trust.
In partnership with the European Union & the Watson Project
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/10/06/honest-cheese-and-transparent-beer-meet-the-food-detectives-making-farm-products-you-can-t
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00:00Europe's best food safety experts are joining forces to crack down on fraud.
00:05Euronews is following them in this special series called The Food Detectives.
00:10In this episode, fresh technology to make farm products you can trust.
00:23Rolling farmland and dairy cows happily grazing.
00:27This idyllic scene in Finland is exactly what you imagine when you think of high-quality, small-scale farm products.
00:34Yet even this sector isn't immune from fraud, as Food Detectives Hanaleena Alakomi explains.
00:41In a small-scale production, there may be a shortage of products.
00:46That's why it's important that there are ways to show the quality of products,
00:53and to explain how the food products have come.
00:57So this farm run by Antti Koljanen is part of a pilot project with the Food Detectives to create a whole new level of transparency across the dairy supply chain.
01:08The plant begins with these robotic milking machines, which measure and test the milk from each cow every day.
01:14Yksilökohtaisesti.
01:15Elikkä jokaisen lehmä maito sitään seuraavia tarkkailemaa ja vain laadukas maito päätyy maitotankkiin.
01:23Robotissa on todella paljon erilaisia mittareita, sähköjohtoutta, lämpötilaa, veden määrää.
01:29The milk is then taken from the farm to this small dairy, where it's transformed into
01:39cheddar cheese, and the effort to maintain total transparency in production continues.
01:45The special ingredient is this QR code label developed by the food detectives from the
01:50EU's Watson project.
01:52Behind this simple printed sticker you'll find the entire story of the product.
01:57The food detectives transparency solution was developed here in Baza on the West
02:27coast of Finland. One of the key goals of this team is for small-scale producers to
02:34be able to easily deploy their total transparency solutions using well-known technology like
02:40QR codes, as food detective Stureud explains.
02:44What we do is actually an exciting combination of the standard technology that still uses, but to
02:57get together a system where you consider yourself to embrace the information, so that the information
03:04can be used by all of the products. Producent, logistics, butiks, consumers and including recycling.
03:20This microbrewery is pilot testing the QR code solution. It means that details like where the barley was harvested are now visible.
03:28Details consumers didn't always have before, according to food detective Pekke Karhunen.
03:33This unique code also helps fight against imitation and fraud.
03:52This unique code also helps fight against imitation and fraud.
03:56The flow of data goes in both directions too. Once customers scan the code with their phones, they can evaluate the product, feedback, comments to the producer and see promotions and updates.
04:15Tällä hetkelläkin siinä jo mahdollisuus, että kuluttaja voi antaa palautetta tuotteesta ja sitä kautta vaikuttaa, antaa suoraan palautetta tuottajalle ja vaikuttaa siihen brändimuodostumiseen.
04:34Toisaalta sitten myös tuottajalle voi päivittää tietoja voi päivittää tietoja, ja jos esimerkiksi tarvetta takaisin vetoon, niin sitten he voi kuluttaja näkee sieltä tämän tiedon.
04:47That's all for this episode.
04:49Next time on The Food Detectives, we're in Spain to see a sweet new system to find fraudulent honey.
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