I'm curious to know which cheesemakers are using these chips. If you look at a wheel of Parmigiano (a whole one), you will see a number stamped on it. That's the cheesemaker's matriculation number in the consortium. There are 313 active ones right now. Some of them are very big (especially the ones in the lowlands) and some of them are very small (mostly the ones up in the hills). The small cheesemakers have trouble selling their current stock, so I doubt that they are putting tracking chips in their wheels. I can see a few big producers that work with the international market adding tracking chips to their wheels, but that's about it.
Another fun fact, most cheesemakers are farmer coops and act as a sort of bank for the farmers. Most of them can borrow against their "share" of the cheese that is aging if they have a big capital expense that it coming up and they can't wait 2-3 years for the cheese to age and sell.
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.
OT, but I just have to say, as someone who buys "Parmesan" cheese that typically hails from Wisconsin, there is just no comparison with legit Parmigiano-Reggiano. It's the same with "Gruyere" and Gruyère -- a wholly unique cheese with a depth of flavor and character that is just inimitable, no matter how good or faithful the imitation may be.
That being said, I'm not ashamed at all to say that the Parmesan I use most is the $4 wedge from Aldi.
My most common consumption method for Parmigiano-Reggiano is standing in front of my fridge at 2am breaking chunks off the wedge, with a squeeze bottle of honey and whatever berries I have on hand. Can recommend.
One thing I miss about my old place in the city was the ridiculously expensive market on my block that carried all of the "real" cheese. The real stuff was so fantastic and flavorful that I usually used far less of it, which partially offset the cost.
I also got a $20 jar of pasta sauce there once. I was embarrassed at how much I paid and didn't tell my wife. After her first taste, her reaction was "OMG, what is this? It's so good!". I took a taste and was blown away. Literally every taste just amazed me, so we kept getting it. I only recognized it by the label and never learned the brand, much to my chagrin (and my wallet's delight) when I moved away and never found it again.
It's somewhat sad that in the US there is no enforcement (probably entirely deliberately as a protectionary measure) of food marks.
In the EU, "Parmesan" cheese must be legit Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. [1]
I'd presume that Grueyere also has the same protections of origin (despite being Swiss and not actually in the EU).
It's the same for a whole plethora of local products [2] and thus consumers know a) what they're actually buying and b) have the confidence that it's a legit product.
Try aging your supermarket-bought cheese (the non-AOP parmesan and gruyere).
You can do so in your kitchen fridge, but stick the cheeses in a small plastic container with a tight-fitting lid because they need high moisture (at least 70% - and that's relative moisture).
Open the box when you see condensation forming on its walls and wipe it down with a paper towel. Then close it again. That's about all the work you need to do.
Parmesan should improve markedly in about a year. Gruyere in three to six months.
Oh- unwrap them first from any vacuum bags they happen to be in. Cheese doesn't age in a vacuum.
It's fine if they're already sliced. Would be hard to fit in the fridge otherwise anyway. Depending on your fridge.
The weird thing is, I don't see that much of a price difference between high-end "domestic" parmesan cheeses and the proper Parmigiano-Reggiano. The Saravecchio Parmesan (that's the Wisconsin domestic you're referring to, I assume) is about $17.99/lb, and the real, imported stuff is about $20/lb--even cheaper at places like Costco. So why not just get the real thing?
One lucky thing about living in Melbourne, Australia is the large Italian migrant community here (the largest number of Italian's living outside of Italy, live here).
Meaning that we have few dedicated markets here that import goods from Italy, including legitimate Parmigiano Reggiano (and Pecorino Romano which is worth trying). The real stuff has these wonderful salt crystals in it that crunch as you eat it.
Not unique - there's a cheese-shop up the road that sells a mature Gruyère that is quite different from their standard-price Gruyère, which in turn is quite unlike supermarket Gruyère. And that's all on the Swiss side of the border - Comté is the same stuff, but made 100 metres away.
> according to the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium (the official trade group for the cheese) the amount of fraud is almost as big as product sales: Authentic Parmigiano Reggiano sales are around $2.44 billion while fraudulent cheese is a $2.08 billion market.
I wonder what they consider fraud. Is it that anything which says "parmesan cheese" on it without being official Parmigiano Reggiano is considered fraud? That is to say, the Kraft Parmesan they mentioned earlier would count as cheese fraud (I don't think it is, since as they say nobody is confused about what they're getting).
Or, do they literally mean there is as much cheese sold under the false pretense of being Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, with fake stamps and serial numbers, and so on?
Well I hope there's a way to remove those trackers, I always put the rinds in soups and stuff so it would piss me off a lot to learn there's some non-food related stuff in it.
Chewing it will definitely break any casing on the device, right?
The other thing I'd like to point out is that these can be copied. They aren't like a yubikey which responds to a challenge with an internal asymmetric private key.
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.
Possibly, no. It's apparently encased in silicon dioxide, and I imagine that is the reason. If it's small enough, chewing it will be like chewing a grain of sand. You won't break it. You might swallow it, but doing so is harmless. You wouldn't want to breathe it in, though.
Maybe the blockchain crypto-anchor that creates a digital 'twin' for physical items would then create that "anchor" (like creating a bitcoin) that can then be linked (traced back) to its source (and intermediate steps like reselling/processing) when the cheese is finally sold in some form?
Oh no! A secret delight is to cut the leftover rind in reasonably safe pieces and abundantly microwave them. Once cooled down they become deliciously crunchy and puffy.
This transponder is "smaller than a grain of salt", so it probably doesn't matter, but in any case it's embedded in the casein label in the wax. If you're really worried about it and have a rind with part of the label on it, scrape off the wax.
If you consume the piece of the rind which has the tracker in it and it gets stuck in some crevice in your bowels how long are you going to be trackable as a piece of Parma cheese?
This reminds me of the whole shebang around "champagne". There are thousands varieties of sparkling wine in the world, most of them are interesting in their own way.
So, what if we stop use term "parmesan" in our recipes and use just "aged hard cheese"?
Presumably the grocer or end user will end up with a pile of rind containing the embedded tagging chips. Fraudsters could simply gather/buy the waste rind plus trackers to embed them in their own fake products. Unless there is a robust disposal process (sending them back to the cheese producer), the genuine trackers will just end up 'authenticating' fake products.
More microplastics - it's all a bit depressing, to be honest.
"p-Chip micro-transponders can tolerate extreme temperatures (-200°C to 500°C); withstand microwave irradiation; ride out high g-forces (15,000 g); and hold up against solvents and reagents."
[+] [-] pacbard|3 years ago|reply
Another fun fact, most cheesemakers are farmer coops and act as a sort of bank for the farmers. Most of them can borrow against their "share" of the cheese that is aging if they have a big capital expense that it coming up and they can't wait 2-3 years for the cheese to age and sell.
[+] [-] perihelions|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] henearkr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gregsadetsky|3 years ago|reply
And the patent -- https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/bf/71/15/70b4303...
[+] [-] hedora|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] kens|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yread|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ge96|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notatoad|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iostream24|3 years ago|reply
My favorite part of Parmesan is the rind
[+] [-] jquery|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jihadjihad|3 years ago|reply
That being said, I'm not ashamed at all to say that the Parmesan I use most is the $4 wedge from Aldi.
[+] [-] blamazon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fatnoah|3 years ago|reply
I also got a $20 jar of pasta sauce there once. I was embarrassed at how much I paid and didn't tell my wife. After her first taste, her reaction was "OMG, what is this? It's so good!". I took a taste and was blown away. Literally every taste just amazed me, so we kept getting it. I only recognized it by the label and never learned the brand, much to my chagrin (and my wallet's delight) when I moved away and never found it again.
[+] [-] mrsuprawsm|3 years ago|reply
In the EU, "Parmesan" cheese must be legit Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. [1] I'd presume that Grueyere also has the same protections of origin (despite being Swiss and not actually in the EU).
It's the same for a whole plethora of local products [2] and thus consumers know a) what they're actually buying and b) have the confidence that it's a legit product.
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/eu-court-says-parmesan-cheese-must-com... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PDO_products_by_countr...
[+] [-] cheese_goddess|3 years ago|reply
You can do so in your kitchen fridge, but stick the cheeses in a small plastic container with a tight-fitting lid because they need high moisture (at least 70% - and that's relative moisture).
Open the box when you see condensation forming on its walls and wipe it down with a paper towel. Then close it again. That's about all the work you need to do.
Parmesan should improve markedly in about a year. Gruyere in three to six months.
Oh- unwrap them first from any vacuum bags they happen to be in. Cheese doesn't age in a vacuum.
It's fine if they're already sliced. Would be hard to fit in the fridge otherwise anyway. Depending on your fridge.
[+] [-] AdmiralAsshat|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Rodeoclash|3 years ago|reply
Meaning that we have few dedicated markets here that import goods from Italy, including legitimate Parmigiano Reggiano (and Pecorino Romano which is worth trying). The real stuff has these wonderful salt crystals in it that crunch as you eat it.
[+] [-] denton-scratch|3 years ago|reply
Not unique - there's a cheese-shop up the road that sells a mature Gruyère that is quite different from their standard-price Gruyère, which in turn is quite unlike supermarket Gruyère. And that's all on the Swiss side of the border - Comté is the same stuff, but made 100 metres away.
[+] [-] bsimpson|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisseaton|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] karaterobot|3 years ago|reply
I wonder what they consider fraud. Is it that anything which says "parmesan cheese" on it without being official Parmigiano Reggiano is considered fraud? That is to say, the Kraft Parmesan they mentioned earlier would count as cheese fraud (I don't think it is, since as they say nobody is confused about what they're getting).
Or, do they literally mean there is as much cheese sold under the false pretense of being Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, with fake stamps and serial numbers, and so on?
[+] [-] qalmakka|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djur|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsimpson|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tragictrash|3 years ago|reply
Chewing it will definitely break any casing on the device, right?
The other thing I'd like to point out is that these can be copied. They aren't like a yubikey which responds to a challenge with an internal asymmetric private key.
[+] [-] robocat|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AnimalMuppet|3 years ago|reply
Or your teeth (which is also not "food safe").
[+] [-] nonameiguess|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FourHand451|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 4oo4|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zepearl|3 years ago|reply
Maybe the blockchain crypto-anchor that creates a digital 'twin' for physical items would then create that "anchor" (like creating a bitcoin) that can then be linked (traced back) to its source (and intermediate steps like reselling/processing) when the cheese is finally sold in some form?
[+] [-] pineconewarrior|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noipv4|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eecc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djur|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vfclists|3 years ago|reply
How degradable are they?
[+] [-] BenjiWiebe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alephxyz|3 years ago|reply
On a serious note, the half-life in acidic solutions (which might include stomach acid) is 1 day according to the link shared by perihelions.
[+] [-] pineconewarrior|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] denton-scratch|3 years ago|reply
Oh, no. I save the rinds to put in soup (I take them out before serving!). Tracking-tag soup, anyone?
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] robga|3 years ago|reply
A timeless match.
[+] [-] noasaservice|3 years ago|reply
Seriously? How the bloody hell does a blockchain do ANYTHING that a database cant?
[+] [-] Gigachad|3 years ago|reply
The whole idea of fraudulent cheese is a little sketchy anyway. Location based restrictions on names feels unethical to me.
[+] [-] SergeAx|3 years ago|reply
So, what if we stop use term "parmesan" in our recipes and use just "aged hard cheese"?
[+] [-] whiw|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bencollier49|3 years ago|reply
"p-Chip micro-transponders can tolerate extreme temperatures (-200°C to 500°C); withstand microwave irradiation; ride out high g-forces (15,000 g); and hold up against solvents and reagents."
Nice and biodegradable then.
[+] [-] syats|3 years ago|reply
Is every buyer of a whole wheel of cheese expected to have a reader for these tags?
I feel sorry for the poor bastard who bought into the buzzword soup of the providers and decided to go on with this project :(
[+] [-] devjam|3 years ago|reply
Brilliant!