Improving the food safety in supply chain: The value of nanotechnology on a growing problem

Abstract

Food safety requires more sophisticated and intelligent technology in the food supply chain management. The emergence and development of nanotechnology brings a good opportunity to improve the complex technical issues that food supply chain safety needed and may bring revolutionary changes to the food supply chain in the future. This paper reviews the current and potential application of nanotechnology to every aspect of food safety in supply chains, include the quality detection, packaging, storage and distribution, tracking and tracing. This review suggests that even with communication as to how nanotechnology may advantage food supply chain safety the next area of research must be to investigate if awareness of the technical advances and benefits alone will be sufficient to accelerate adoption of these technologies by businesses to improve product visibility and food safety, quality and security. © 2014 Wageningen Academic Publishers.