CSIR will soon unveil a technology to help consumers identify spoilt milk without opening the packet of milk.

Speaking at the ongoing IDF World Dairy Summit 2022, Rajeshwar S. Matche, Chief Scientist and Head, Food Packaging and Technology, CSIR-CFTRI said that ordinary people face this basic issue of buying a packet of milk but cannot identify if it is spoilt at the outlet itself.

A significant issue for the organised dairy industry as well, CFTRI division of CSIR started working on this specific issue based on market feedback and has so far tested this label based easy to use technology on milk, meat and idli & dosa batter.

The team has been closely working with Nandini Dairy for experiments with near to 100% success rate.

Tentatively called ‘Time Temperature based Spoilage Indicator Testing’, the per packet cost of technology will be 20-25 paisa. CSIR believes this will help in implementing the technology at mass scale.

“We are sensitive to both the issues of our Indian people and affordability of that solution. The food items that have been tested so far are used at mass scale, so we were sure about one thing from the beginning that the technology has to be affordable,” said Sridevi Annapurna Singh, Director, CSIR-Central Food Technological Research Institute, Mysuru.

CSIR is working with a technology company to automate the process, as manual sticking of label on milk or other food item is a slow process.

Once the automation is on board, CSIR will be able to launch this technology in India and overseas.

Source : Tech circle 15th Sep 2022 by Swati Luthra