New Perspectives on Adoption of RFID Technology for Agrifood Traceability

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an ubiquitous technology which may provide important improvements for the agri-food in different fields, e.g., supply chain management and alimentary security. As a consequence of local laws in many countries, which lay down that the traceability of food products is mandatory, industrial and academic research entities have been conducting studies on traceability management based on non-traditional technologies. A relevant outcome from these studies states that RFID systems seem to help reducing processing time and human-related errors in traceability operations due to their automation characteristics; nevertheless, engineering and economical constraints slow down their full adoption. The main purpose of this chapter is to analyze, describe and compare the most significant and novel RFID-based traceability systems in the agri-food sector while providing an exhaustive survey of benefits, drawbacks and new perspectives for their adoption. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60960-487-5.ch008