The deal has been completed, a lucrative beef export contract to China is waiting, and it is time to celebrate with new business partners at the top restaurants on the Shanghai Bund.
Naturally, you can order the most expensive food on the menu-a meal of A $375 500 grams of top and beef, along with the name of an Australian trump breeder. You know it's real. After all, this restaurant is famous for its high quality food and real material. But you still have a little doubt of 0.001%: what if someone in the supply chain swaps it for a cheaper piece of meat? There are so many examples of poor food quality and adulteration in China today, and it's hard to be absolutely sure.
No problem-there was a dramatic development on the table, and the Beef sommelier pulled out a smartphone, opened the app, pointed it at the steak, and then the whole piece of meat came out of the screen. It can even be traced back to the cow's parent-child relationship, its farm, grazing pastures, the number of days it fed grain, and the time and place where it was processed.
Sounds like a dream? Now it is. But for beef producers planning to participate in the "food trust platform" currently being developed by PricewaterhouseCoopers and its partners, this could become a reality in the next 12 months.
The secret is invisibility spray-the tiny silica "cube" is almost as fine as the best flour, ejected onto the side of the beef via an electronic etching program to create traceable serialized barcodes for each steak.
The etching process, approved by Australia's government Food Standards Agency, can withstand freezing temperatures and burns ranging from minus 40 degrees Celsius to 1400 degrees Celsius. Invisible markings do not affect meat; nor does the taste of meat be affected by the unique "labels" produced by the process. Herratti (Craig Heraghty), a PricewaterhouseCoopers Australian agribusiness representative, said the result was "absolutely a change" for the industry-a covert, edible, non-change label.
"when we started creating this technology platform two years ago, our guiding principle was to increase the profitability of farms and provide more information to customers when consuming," Herati told Nikkei Asia Review. "this will show you the entire supply chain. It will provide trust in branded products and mean that farmers' promises can go beyond borders. "
For Australia's top brands, such as Jack's Creek--, which have won three awards for "best steak in the world"-as well as David Blackmore's famous and cattle-that should mean more international credibility. According to Western food safety agencies, the world is in urgent need of food safety and authenticity, worth about 65 billion yuan a year of counterfeit food.
China is more than 70% of the world's counterfeit food sources and end-market. Herati said that in the meat industry alone, the world's 2 billion yuan of secondary charging and adulteration industries have about 3/4 of fraudulent products sold in China. In China, for example, only half of the meat known as Australian beef actually comes from Australia.
China bought one hundred and ten thousand metric tons of Australian beef in 2017, according to the Australian Meat and Animal Husbandry Association (Meat&Livestock Australia,MLA), the meat industry research and development agency. It's worth A $782 million ($573 million at today's prices).
China's consumer demand for high-quality imported beef will continue to grow as urbanization and disposable income increase and the economy shifts to a consumption-driven economy, the MLA predicts. Australia's main competitors in this market are Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and New Zealand.
While rising incomes in China mean a growing demand for rich foods such as meat and dairy products, awareness of food safety is also growing.
A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in October 2016 found that Chinese see food safety as a matter of concern, rising from 12 percent in 2008 to 40 percent in 2016. This provides a marketing advantage for countries such as Australia and New Zealand, which have a "clean green" image-as long as there are no loopholes and no pollution from exports.
PricewaterhouseCoopers' food trust platform aims to address safety issues by emphasizing meat sources.
"We are in the pilot phase of this technology and are experimenting with five or six iconic Australian beef brands from Hunter Valley,Hunter Valley and the northern and southern regions of Australia."
One of the first places to launch a new tracking system since Australia is likely to be Victor Churchill, an upscale meat mall in the east of Sydney, where the best Blackmore and cattle are priced at $500 a kilogram.
Australians want to buy cheap, delicious steaks every day-and high-quality beef prices range from 30 to 35 yuan per kilogram at large supermarket chains such as Coles and Woolworths. But the tracking system can only cost a few cents per steak, and there is no reason not to be widely used in meat trade.
Consumers of high-end beef in China will no longer have to consider sources, but Australians will also benefit.