As fuel costs continue to rise, transporting perishable food items becomes more expensive. And as water supplies continue to diminish, growing crops becomes more challenging. Those are two reasons why it’s so important to address the food spoilage problems that plague the perishable foods cold supply chain, and one reason why President Obama recently signed the Food Safety Modernization Act.

According to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), over half of the food produced globally is lost, wasted or discarded as a result of inefficiency in the human-managed food chain.

With that in mind, the food cold supply chain is turning to RFID-based solutions that can monitor temperature and expiration dates. In November, Intelleflex launched on-demand, product-level monitoring system for perishable foods and the pharmaceutical cold chain.

The Intelleflex solution was recently featured in a news segment by WKGO-TV, an affiliate of ABC News. Click here to watch the video.

A blurb from the news report:

By most accounts, one-third of all fruits and vegetables are discarded somewhere between the field and the customer because it is so difficult to monitor the shelf life of produce. A temperature variation of just 2 degrees during shipment can cut 4 days off the life of berries and bananas. Current technology monitors only a whole truck, regardless of which side travels in the sun or other factors. This technology, on the other hand, records what happens to every pallet, every minute, every step of the way.

Peter Mehring, CEO of Santa Clara’s Intelleflex says, “We collect a month of temperature data in one tag that can be quickly be read out and be displayed on our handheld readers.”

Click here to view RFID 24-7′s coverage on how RFID is being used in agriculture.