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Parmigiano-Reggiano makers are putting edible microchips the size of a grain of sand into their 90-pound cheese wheels to combat counterfeiters

https://www.businessinsider.com/edible-microchips-on-parmigiano-reggiano-used-to-fight-counterfeiters-2023-8

Italian Parmigiano-Reggiano makers are using microchips to verify the authenticity of their products and thwart scammers.

Parmigiano-Reggiano makers are putting edible microchips the size of a grain of sand into their 90-pound cheese wheels to combat counterfeiters

Sure why not? Add to the delicious medley of microplastics and persistent organic pollutants, what could go wrong!

43 comments

Shrike502

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This is such a beautiful piece of news. Beautiful the way a hurricane is beautiful. Such a perfect combination of everything wrong

HiddenLayer5

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Contaminating food with semiconductors (especially food that's expected to be heated to very high temperatures in some dishes, perfect for breaking down already non-edible chemicals into even more reactive pollutants and then actively drawing them out of the semiconductor to where it's more readily absorbed by the intestines.) Look up some of the chemicals used to create the semiconductor effect in silicon. Arsenic is a really common one. It's locked away in the silicon crystal and harmless when outside your body, but inside your body when exposed to the heat of cooking and then strong acid in your stomach, who knows?!
Making your own product worse to own the counterfeiters. One of the biggest reasons for avoiding counterfeit food is the higher risk of contaminants, well now that the genuine product is contaminated what's the goddamn point?
Probably not preventing counterfeiters as in "they're selling a block of flour and passing it off as cheese", because you don't need a chip to detect that. More like "it didn't come from this very specific region in Italy by the established cheese monopoly, but it's pretty much identical otherwise." Protecting the brand and its profitability, not the consumer.
Literal fucking food DRM. Remember when this used to be satire?

Shrike502

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Exactly!

senoro

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The chip is in the rind which you don’t eat. And the chip is food safe anyway, if someone was to eat the rind.

HiddenLayer5

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And the chip is food safe anyway

The food industry has used that line way too many times to be trusted.

redtea

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I don't think you know how this cheese works. The rind is edible. It has the strongest flavour, so it's what's used in sauces, etc. If you ever had parmesan in a sauce e.g. at a restaurant, you ate the rind. Hence the need to put an edible microchip in it – because people are expected to eat it.

senoro

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Very interesting, i didn’t know that.

redtea

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Sorry for my hostility. I get upset when companies pull stunts like this. Monopoly rent on flavour is a sin.

senoro

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No you’re good. I can see it being like a way to try and verify where the cheese you’re buying comes from but embedding it in the rind seems a bit excessive when you could just use a tag with a private key signature on it that comes with the cheese.

Out of curiosity, do you know any dishes that use a sauce made of parmegianno regianno rind that someone who is a beginner-amateur (at best) at cooking could make? Or are these dishes quite complicated generally? I have always just thrown out the rind so finding out you can use it to make sauces and it’s the most flavourful part is life changing for me.

moody

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Look up a Mornay sauce.

Basically, it's a bechamel sauce with cheese added to it. It can be any cheese, but Parmigiano is common. Very simple to make.

o_d

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It's also common when cooking at home to save the rind for soups and stews. It gives it extra umami.

TrashGoblin

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The rind is often used in cooking, as a source of umami for soups and so on.

redtea

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Cauliflower, cheddar, and parmesan soup with parmesan croutons mmm

201dberg

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There is a guy on YouTube called the cheese man or something who tries out cheese making recipes. He would try to replicate some types of cheeses himself when there wasn't a lot of information out there about them. There was one kind, can't remember the name of it, but he made it and some company from EU had him take down the video for copyright shit. Like these people have teams just scouring the internet for any reference to their cheese to be ready to sue if anyone dares to make a cheese similar to theirs. lol. I'm sure this dudes 2 small rounds of cheese and his few "curd nerd" followers was a massive danger to their monopolization of some obscure cheese 90% of people have never heard of or will ever eat.

HiddenLayer5

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Related: The EU is super anal about names and designations. Remember when they tried to ban plant based meat patties from being called "hamburgers?" Even though the word hamburger is literally German for "of/from Hamburg," in reference to its claimed birthplace, and nothing about the word implies that it has meat in it (English speakers sometimes think it's referencing ham). This is 100% not to protect consumers or the environment but to protect businesses. If they gave a shit about who they claim to protect they would be going the complete other way, promoting and normalizing plant based alternatives to animal products.

Same with plant based milks IIRC. It's not even enough for them that they're called "soy milk" or "oat milk" or something even though the usage of the word in that way has been in the common vernacular for ages. Only nipple juice shall be bestowed the title of milk in these fair kingdoms! Seriously, do they think consumers can't tell the difference when it's already spelled out for them on the packaging and plant based food producers actively promote the plant based aspect as a selling point? They think people are too dumb to read the huge bold text that literally say "plant based" or "vegan" right next to the product noun?

PolandIsAStateOfMind

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I remember literal international scandal between something like 5 or 6 countries about what can be called "slivovitz" despite it's really a common word for plum brandy.

HiddenLayer5

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Also the classic Whisky vs Whiskey.

Aru

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The Australian

redtea

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Because of its world-famous reputation for quality, Parmigiano-Reggiano can be sold at a higher price point than cheese simply labeled "parmesan,"

As if a 'business journalist' would just echo this lie. I'm not overly surprised. Parmesan made by any other reputable blessed cheesemaker is going to be sufficient quality even if they taste slightly different. And in the context of counterfeit cheese? If it's so good that you have to put microchips in the 'real' one because otherwise there's no way to tell which is which, it's surely an endorsement for the 'fake' cheese.

The parmesan in a plastic tub that's mostly saw dust is better anyway; I'm reluctant to make lofty claims but it might just be the people's parmesan. I wouldn't even be surprised if it's vegan too.

Che_Donkey

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but its "edible"!!!!!

HiddenLayer5

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"Well can it fit down your gullet hole! Yes. So what's the problem? It's by definition edible, as in able to be eaten." - Cheese exec.

PolandIsAStateOfMind

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Everything is edible, but some things just once.

Shinhoshi

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proceeds to eat the United States

relay

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Why can't they just put it in the packaging and not in the cheese itself?

HiddenLayer5

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That's what I'm wondering.

PolandIsAStateOfMind

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Maybe the brand maniacs eat that too?

bennieandthez

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Thats a good way to stop people from buying your cheese 😂

autotldr

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This is the best summary I could come up with:

The next time you dig into a bowl of pasta with freshly grated parmesan, you could accidentally be eating a microchip.

That's because makers of Parmigiano-Reggiano are implanting microchips into the casings of their 90-pound cheese wheels as the latest move to ward off counterfeiters, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Parmigiano-Reggiano must be made in a particular area of northern Italy's Emilia Romagna region and with specific production standards and techniques.

The microchip can then be scanned to pull up a unique serial ID that buyers can use to ensure they've got the real thing.

"We keep fighting with new methods," Alberto Pecorari, whose job is to protect the product's authenticity for a group that represents Parmigiano makers, told the Journal.

Parmigiano-Reggiano is among the many food products that are formally protected in the European Union, including Champagne from France and Feta from Greece.

The original article contains 324 words, the summary contains 144 words. Saved 56%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

PostingInternational

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Funnily enough, many Swiss believe Parmigiano-Reggiano is a counterfeit of their own, they claim even older, Sbrinz cheese.

https://www.cheese.com/sbrinz/

GaveUp

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This is why I don't hate on most anti-vaxxers. Most either don't trust vaccines because they don't trust the US government to give them free vaccines when they normally get fucked on healthcare everywhere else or because of microchips in the vaccine which was always possible

ImmortanStalin

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What's the point of a microchip in a vaccine when you've got a tracking device, voice recorder, video recorder, etc on or near you 24/7? Those vaccines weren't free, we paid for them indirectly.

redtea

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There are so many layers to unravel before many people will trust pharmaceutical companies. It doesn't help that Marxists (naturally the most charismatic and wise advocates, so well respected in communities and likely to be listened to) are usually the ones most critical of bourgeois governments and big pharma.

I have a rather low opinion of anti vaxxers but like you, I don't hate them; we can't hate them until they've ignored us after we've instigated a system of revolutionary education. But to blame them personally in the meantime? I don't see many revolutionaries rolling out educational programs nowadays. Not near me at least. I don't have stats but most of the anti vaxxers I know (it's unfortunately quite a few) are not well educated.

rjs001

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redtea

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The mind boggles. I remember the start of the pandemic hearing people say so and so is a nurse and she says Covid is nothing to worry about. What a ****. Maybe I do hate them—these 'medical professionals' got people killed by their refusal to investigate and by their hubris. Society is riddled with people who are entirely unconcerned with conspiracy for gross negligence.

rjs001

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bennieandthez

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Nah antivaxxers are just dumbos.

GaveUp

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Of course but dumbos don't all deserve hate or ridicule

bennieandthez

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In a vacuum id agree with that statement but this is an exception. Conspiracy folks need to be ridiculed out of that rabbit hole.

rjs001

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EasyDoesIt

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the microchip is in the crust, so you won't eat it, unless you eat the crust, that rarely someone does

the counterfeit parmigiano is a serious issue, because you will get a cheese with a very low quality, with a milk that is not in a controlled supply chain from Emilia Romagna

PolandIsAStateOfMind

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the counterfeit parmigiano is a serious issue, because you will get a cheese with a very low quality, with a milk that is not in a controlled supply chain from Emilia Romagna

The horror

ComradeChairmanKGB

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Truly existential

Shinhoshi

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I legit thought that was a bit ngl

Pili

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No matter the quality, it's still just fermented rape juice and the sellers should be put through the same horrors as the cows they exploit.

rjs001

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EasyDoesIt

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it depends on the company, some of them treat decently the cattles, like in the biologico products and other small companies; Parmigiano Regiano is not a company but a type of cheese, ultimately the consumer has the choice to choose the products where animals are well treated

the counterfeit products will bypass any of those choice, that's why a certificate origin is important

rjs001

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EasyDoesIt

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i think we're shifting the focus of the main topic, that was the microchip inside the crust of the seasoned cheese, not the ethics of the cheese process, I don't even eat cheese and I don't agree with the industrial process of gathering the milk

but at some point to survive you have to eat something animal, but you can choose the most ethical one, I buy the eggs of chickens of a local farmer where I can see that they can play in the grass; will I steal the human babies like I do with the eggs?, no! but I need to survive, and the vegan supplements creates more pollution and more health problems than a bunch of local eggs