Italian Parmigiano-Reggiano makers are using microchips to verify the authenticity of their products and thwart scammers.

Sure why not? Add to the delicious medley of microplastics and persistent organic pollutants, what could go wrong!

  • HiddenLayer5@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
    361·
    11 months ago

    1. Contaminating food with semiconductors (especially food that’s expected to be heated to very high temperatures in some dishes, perfect for breaking down already non-edible chemicals into even more reactive pollutants and then actively drawing them out of the semiconductor to where it’s more readily absorbed by the intestines.) Look up some of the chemicals used to create the semiconductor effect in silicon. Arsenic is a really common one. It’s locked away in the silicon crystal and harmless when outside your body, but inside your body when exposed to the heat of cooking and then strong acid in your stomach, who knows?!

    2. Making your own product worse to own the counterfeiters. One of the biggest reasons for avoiding counterfeit food is the higher risk of contaminants, well now that the genuine product is contaminated what’s the goddamn point?

    3. Probably not preventing counterfeiters as in “they’re selling a block of flour and passing it off as cheese”, because you don’t need a chip to detect that. More like “it didn’t come from this very specific region in Italy by the established cheese monopoly, but it’s pretty much identical otherwise.” Protecting the brand and its profitability, not the consumer.

    4. Literal fucking food DRM. Remember when this used to be satire?

    • senoro@lemmy.mlEnglish
      39·
      11 months ago

      The chip is in the rind which you don’t eat. And the chip is food safe anyway, if someone was to eat the rind.

      • HiddenLayer5@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
        33·
        11 months ago

        And the chip is food safe anyway

        The food industry has used that line way too many times to be trusted.

      • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
        29·
        11 months ago

        I don’t think you know how this cheese works. The rind is edible. It has the strongest flavour, so it’s what’s used in sauces, etc. If you ever had parmesan in a sauce e.g. at a restaurant, you ate the rind. Hence the need to put an edible microchip in it – because people are expected to eat it.

          • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
            13·
            11 months ago

            Sorry for my hostility. I get upset when companies pull stunts like this. Monopoly rent on flavour is a sin.

            • senoro@lemmy.mlEnglish
              5·
              11 months ago

              No you’re good. I can see it being like a way to try and verify where the cheese you’re buying comes from but embedding it in the rind seems a bit excessive when you could just use a tag with a private key signature on it that comes with the cheese.

              Out of curiosity, do you know any dishes that use a sauce made of parmegianno regianno rind that someone who is a beginner-amateur (at best) at cooking could make? Or are these dishes quite complicated generally? I have always just thrown out the rind so finding out you can use it to make sauces and it’s the most flavourful part is life changing for me.

              • moody@lemmings.world
                2·
                11 months ago

                Look up a Mornay sauce.

                Basically, it’s a bechamel sauce with cheese added to it. It can be any cheese, but Parmigiano is common. Very simple to make.