Monitoring of beef cold chain to ensure quality, safety, and halal using RFID: A review

The traceability application by the industry to ensure products along the supply chain include quality, safe and halal. Traceability is an essential part of the cold chain system for meat and meat products. The cold chain of beef, including a slaughterhouse, distribution, and retail, needs to be monitored. The decline in the beef quality is marked by sensory changes such as color, unpleasant odor, and mucus formation triggered by bacterial growth. Beef quality is easily damaged during distribution due to the complexity and length of the cold chain. Consumers also pay attention to the halalness of beef in the supply chain. The implementation of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) can monitor changes in quality and halalness of beef when distribution utilizes various sensor and product information tags. RFID requires a transponder to store and retrieve data remotely, an antenna for transponders, and a reader. This article reviews the RFID traceability system, the cold supply chain for beef, and RFID development to maintain beef quality, safety, and halalness. RFID technology helps producers and consumers to get quality, safe, and halal beef information in real-time.