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'Sentinel Wrap'

Canada: Smart packaging can reduce food safety incidents

For the last 30 years, the packaging industry has been promising to come up with packaging that would flag foods and beverages that contained harmful bacteria or contaminants. And although many tests were done, it's still hasn’t made it to market.

However, now that is about to change.

A team of researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, are hoping to make it easier for consumers to tell if a package containing meat or salad greens is contaminated with a pathogen like E. coli, by simply looking at a thin plastic patch called ‘Sentinel Wrap’.

The transparent, durable and flexible sensing strip has one side coated with a microarray of droplets of DNA molecules known as DNAzymes. If a pathogen comes in contact with the DNAzymes, the strip will light up.

Shoppers then have to use an app on a mobile device to "read" the fluorescence to see if the food inside is spoiled.

Winsightgrocerybusiness.com quoted McMaster professor Carlos Filipe as saying: "Essentially the sequence has been designed so if a bacteria is present, that DNA is going to be broken in a particular location."

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