The European Commission has unveiled a new artificial intelligence (AI) platform, TraceMap, to accelerate the detection of food fraud, contaminated food and foodborne disease outbreaks across the EU. In line with the EU’s high safety standards for food and imported products, this new tool will reinforce consumer safety and help national authorities work more effectively, by innovating on how we assess, detect and respond to food safety risks and fraudulent activity. TraceMap will use AI to improve food safety risk assessments by streamlining access and analysing critical data; rapidly identify links between operators and consignments; monitor the entire agri-food supply chain, once a risk is identified, enabling faster recalls of unsafe or fraudulent products.
As of today (10 March), TraceMap is accessible to national authorities in all member states, allowing them to better target controls and carry out more thorough investigations, without requiring additional resources. It will use the extensive data in the existing EU agri-food systems to track trade patterns and production flows at a fast pace. The platform will improve screening accuracy, speed up the detection of suspicious operators and help investigators to detect food fraud and food borne outbreaks and remove non-compliant products from the market quickly. TraceMap empowers Member States to close gaps, address vulnerabilities and strengthen their anti-fraud measures in the agri-food sector. It will also enable better control of imported goods, in line with the strengthened measures set out in the Vision for Agriculture and Food.
More information is available in the press release.
