Tagging the product rather than the packaging could help tackle food crimes like substitution and dilution, according to Fi Europe 2024 Startup Challenge winner Natural Trace.
According to the Food Authenticity Network, food fraud costs the global food industry an estimated $40 billion annually. Crimes vary from substitution with an inferior ingredient to dilution, mislabelling and intellectual property rights infringement, but all have the common objective of undue economic gain.
Technologies for preventing and detecting food fraud are continually advancing, but increasingly complex global supply chains are making it more difficult to combat these crimes. Recognising that traceability is key to tackling food fraud, the food industry is proactively developing more effective solutions for product identification throughout the supply chain.
Embedding chips or tags in packaging can mitigate the risk of certain acts of food fraud, such as counterfeiting, but cannot authenticate the contents. To provide holistic protection against food fraud, strategies need to go beyond unit-level traceability and enable the identification of the product and its ingredients.
This was the motivation behind the conceptualisation of Natural Trace - a DNA-based traceability solution that can be added directly into products and detected along the supply chain.
“It was an idea that came about during the pandemic,” Dr Julia Lee, chief commercial officer of Natural Trace, told Fi Global Insights. “We could see what the industry needed, and at that time, the adoption of molecular-based technologies such as PCR was accelerating rapidly. That gave us the inspiration for a bio-barcode that could be detected using molecular technologies.”
Three years on, this concept has crystallised into a concrete business venture that was named the ‘Most innovative service or digital solution supporting the food industry’ in the 2024 Fi Europe Startup Challenge.
There are three elements to the Natural Trace solution, Lee explained.
“There is the ingredient that we put into the food that gives it a unique signature. That is what we call the NaturalTag. Then, at a later point in the food supply chain, at a factory or retailer, for example, this tag is detected using our NaturalDetect PCR-based method,” she said.
Then comes the third part, when the results from the testing are uploaded to the NaturalCloud, which serves as a digital database as well as providing surveillance, mapping, and supply chain insights.
“Specifically, it tells you what is happening when and where to your product; it becomes a digital link between a food and its rightful owner,” said Lee.
Whilst Natural Trace is not alone in offering DNA-based food tags, the clue to its unique selling point lies in the name.
“Most other DNA-based tags are genetically modified - in other words, they have been changed in a lab – or they are made from synthetic DNA. We do not genetically modify, and our tags are 100 per cent natural,” said Lee.
“This is absolutely central to our value proposition and provides assurance to the food industry and clarity on our regulatory position. We have, for instance, achieved self-determined GRAS status for our unique tags.”
Natural Trace’s tags are made from inactivated probiotics, which helps to reinforce their ‘food-safe’ and ‘natural’ positioning. Each tag is unique, and the company has built up a library of more than 20,000 that are ready for use by the industry, with plans to expand this further in 2025.
Giving an example of the insights that would be generated from this solution, Lee said that a company might submit samples to Natural Trace’s laboratory for testing, with details of when and where the samples were collected. If the tag is present, this will be denoted via a green light on a map; if no tag is present, there will be a red light.
“In this way it serves as an alarm system for alerting producers to potential food fraud. If they see a red dot where they are expecting a green one, it begs the question of what is happening - could it be that substitution has taken place, for example?” said Lee.
By determining whether there is a DNA match, the system can detect the presence or absence of the original product/ingredient.
“It gives you surveillance of your supply chain, and that is a very helpful starting point for addressing food fraud,” she said.
The PCR method that Natural Trace is currently using is a semi-quantitative method which may indicate possible cases of fraud involving substitution or dilution. The company is working on a fully quantitative method to unequivocally confirm such fraud cases,.
Natural Trace is already in commercial use and the firm reports significant traction in the nutraceuticals industry, where companies are using it to prevent fraud and achieve supply chain transparency.
“We’re also engaged in various pilot trials, including applications in sustainable agriculture and cross-border supply chains, such as coffee and fruits,” Lee added.
Asked what types of businesses are adopting Natural Trace, Lee replied: “We are seeing interest from multiple actors within the supply chain because they all want transparency. So it might be implemented by an end-product manufacturer, a retailer, an ingredient manufacturer or by multiple players in the chain working together.”
