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Parmigiano Reggiano makers embedding tiny trackers in rind to fight cheese fraud

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221–230 of 317 posts

Re: Parmigiano Reggiano makers embedding tiny trackers in rind to fight cheese fraud

#221
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting a bad rate doesn't mean you also accept it.

Having only cheese to create leverage limits your options

Sounded to me like they didn't even have the milk, and like they're in rural areas of developing nations.

Re: Parmigiano Reggiano makers embedding tiny trackers in rind to fight cheese fraud

#222

I found technical details about the device: https://www.isenet.it/product/pharmaseq-products/ It's tiny (500 microns), passive, photocell-powered (you point a laser at it), and encapsulated in an inert SiO2 coating.

That confirms something I suspected: blockchain adds nothing to this solution, and is present only because of the fad.

Re: Parmigiano Reggiano makers embedding tiny trackers in rind to fight cheese fraud

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until 1976, I had never heard of Comté; they sold that cheese as Gruyére, even though it was made in France. In that year, the AOC regulations came fully into force, and it became illegal to sell cheese made in France as Gruyére. There are many regional variations and qualities of Comté, too. When De Gaulle asked "How can you govern a country with 200 different cheeses", he was underestimating badly.

Until 1976, are you sure? This docu shows "Le Fromage de Comté" and it's dated 1927: https://youtu.be/icu-oMerROI One of the legends points out the similarity with Gruyére, but it still calls the French cheese Comté: "Le fromage de Comté, analogue du Gruyére suisse, se differencie de l' Emmental..."

Well, I could be wrong. The AOC rules certainly came fully into force then. And as a kid in France <= 15, I'd buy Gruyére in the grocers, and it wouldn't have the snazzy Swiss cross printed on the rind. Perhaps until then, "Gruyére" was a generic term, and they'd sell you Gruyére or Comté, whichever they had.

Re: Parmigiano Reggiano makers embedding tiny trackers in rind to fight cheese fraud

#225
post #218
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, what percentage of these crack open during processing, and how poisonous are they without the sio2 casing? What about when they hit the sewer processing plant, and are eventually dumped. Also, what sort of environmental impact does producing them have? Hopefully they'll be forced to label products that have these things in them. Otherwise, I'll be switching to fake Parmesan.

What makes you think any chip would be harmful to ingest? You could happily eat most chips, if they were small enough, without any negative effects.

There's some hideously toxic metals in certain semiconductors, e.g.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium_arsenide

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadmium_telluride

Re: Parmigiano Reggiano makers embedding tiny trackers in rind to fight cheese fraud

#226
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern finance and accounting more-or-less started in Renaissance Italy. Double-entry bookkeeping meant merchants and bankers kept good books. Good books and good accounting made negotiable instruments like bills of exchange (e.g. checks) and letters of credit reliable--at least when drawn on or issued by Italian banks and their partners around the continent--which meant travelers and traders didn't need to carry alo…

Sounds interesting. I never would have assumed double-entry bookkeeping went back that far. Any good book suggestions?

A 1914 English translation of his 1499 Italian books from archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/ancientdoubleent00geij

Re: Parmigiano Reggiano makers embedding tiny trackers in rind to fight cheese fraud

#227
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern finance and accounting more-or-less started in Renaissance Italy. Double-entry bookkeeping meant merchants and bankers kept good books. Good books and good accounting made negotiable instruments like bills of exchange (e.g. checks) and letters of credit reliable--at least when drawn on or issued by Italian banks and their partners around the continent--which meant travelers and traders didn't need to carry alo…

Sounds interesting. I never would have assumed double-entry bookkeeping went back that far. Any good book suggestions?

The Medici family supposedly invented it. Very fascinating family.

https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/how-the-medici-family-...

Re: Parmigiano Reggiano makers embedding tiny trackers in rind to fight cheese fraud

#228
post #55
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That works even if you remove the "Blockchain".

Only if you have a trusted central database. With blockchain you can move your cheese independent of central authority.

You can not have trustless consensus when you have the commodity created outside of the block chain. Bitcoin works because mining both verifies transactions and creates new bitcoins. A blockchain that verifies transactions but just blindly stores newly created commodity units has no purpose. It's just an inefficient database.

Re: Parmigiano Reggiano makers embedding tiny trackers in rind to fight cheese fraud

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until 1976, are you sure? This docu shows "Le Fromage de Comté" and it's dated 1927: https://youtu.be/icu-oMerROI One of the legends points out the similarity with Gruyére, but it still calls the French cheese Comté: "Le fromage de Comté, analogue du Gruyére suisse, se differencie de l' Emmental..."

Well, I could be wrong. The AOC rules certainly came fully into force then. And as a kid in France <= 15, I'd buy Gruyére in the grocers, and it wouldn't have the snazzy Swiss cross printed on the rind. Perhaps until then, "Gruyére" was a generic term, and they'd sell you Gruyére or Comté, whichever they had.

It was used as a generic term. Even now, people commonly say “gruyère” when they mean “emmental”.

Re: Parmigiano Reggiano makers embedding tiny trackers in rind to fight cheese fraud

#230
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like it is in the qrcode sticker (which most people wouldn’t eat) - shown in the photo in the article. Eating it is no worse than eating a 500 micron grain of sand, except that the chip is safer and more hygienic to eat.

500 microns is pretty big for a food contaminant. It's about 4~5 hair widths, so I reckon your tongue can probably feel it and it might break under your bite. I would bet it's safe if swallowed whole, but chewing? Not so sure.

Do you regularly chew grains of sand? I reckon your enamel is more in danger from this than anything else.
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