We're not ashamed to say we love food. Eating it, cooking it, growing it, taking photos of it (have a look at our Instagram -- it's foodie heaven). Passion drives our mission to make food supply chains safer. We don't like hearing stories of people sickened by tainted ingredients, unhygienic food handling, poor cooking practices, supply chain deficiencies ... nor, do we like hearing of producers who are wrongly accused or who receive information too late to prevent further issues or harm. Sumfood believes that by working with you to make food safer, we'll all make the world a better place.
Data science is a dry term for a fascinating subject. While our technological age produces daunting amounts of data, there are ways of grouping data into manageable sets. From there we can discover trends and truths about food safety and transparency, cases of food borne illness and outbreaks -- topics of interest to those of us who, you know, eat food. Plus, crowdsourcing will help us get a jump on potentially harmful outbreaks and teach us what questions people are asking about food -- especially when you reach out to us right here.
We considered words like 'enlightenment' and 'wisdom' for the third piece of our logo but settled on 'insight' -- it's a bit less pompous, but perfectly appropriate. Truth is, our food industry expertise and data science/crowdsourcing resources make us a formidable provider of real-time insights into an industry weighed down by bureaucratic complexity, ever-shifting politics and profit-driven producers. In a world of increasingly murky affiliations Sumfood is proudly 100% independent.
We're small. Multi-talented.
Impatient.
Posted on Oct 17, 2018
There is something quite disappointing about ordering a coffee only to be served something that does not meet our expectations. Anticipation and then unmet expectations. A first world problem and one that we can shrug off as a quirk of our indulgent western lifestyle; it is not something that will impact our health, our work, nor our future. It’s a quality issue not a food safety one. But, what if the factors or inputs are different? Instead of a mid-afternoon coffee, the item is malaria medication or a bowl of rice for a hungry child? Circumstances that do have severe consequences.
Posted on Oct 10, 2018
Food recalls happen for a myriad of reasons with contamination, failure to declare allergens, and mis-labelling as the usual culprits. The consequences of these human errors (or system failures) are both a risk to human health, and food wastage, as food, unfit for human consumption, is withdrawn from the supply chain.
Posted on Oct 08, 2018
As long as food has been traded there have been those who have sought to gain more out of the trade equation that their trading partners ... but, it's time to talk about something different, something far more dangerous, and dark. Something that threatens all of us who eat... food terrorism - deliberate tampering with the food system to cause harm.
Posted on Oct 05, 2018
Confused about "use by" and "best before" - a short video to explain the difference
