Comprehensive traceability system of milk samples using RFID

Inhalt:
When collecting milk production, a refrigerated bulk tank lorry makes collections from dairy farms in the area within a few hours. Before pumping the milk from each farm's tank, the driver collects a sample to be saved and transported in the cabin for further analysis in a laboratory. The quality of the milk sets the price of the tank, which becomes a means of all batches in it. Therefore, farmers are not encouraged to produce higher quality milk, but only to satisfy a minimum standard. Moreover, there may be even bigger problems, as the detection of antibiotics in the tank. If this is the case, the samples are analysed and the responsible farmer has to pay all other farmers for the whole tank, plus a fine. However, as the level of antibiotics detected is usually extremely low and as antibiotics rapidly deteriorate with high temperatures, it is often the case that the contamination is detected in the tank but not in any of the samples. Thus, the need for the samples to be kept in optimum - refrigerated - conditions during transportation to ensure a reliable result on the laboratory tests is a key issue. This paper presents a solution for the identification and tracing of these samples. A microcontroller-based system has been developed to control critical parameters (as the temperature related to GPS coordinates at all times), and uses RFID technology to register and trace the milk samples on their trip from farms to the laboratory. Keywords: Traceability, RFID, smart sensors, embedded systems.