PRECISE will offer a hand-held sensor which will be used in supermarkets, and restaurants. The sensor gives the user the PRECISE expiration date of the measured piece of meat and fish, eliminating doubts about freshness and reducing product waste. 

Today, the only mean to control actual freshness of meat/fish products are available only to the producer’s part of the value chain. They are microbiological tests conducted at external laboratories requiring shipping of samples, growing, and counting bacteria. Such tests are seldom carried out, since they are expensive (app. 335 € /sample), time consuming (48 hours) and do not predict the exact expiration date. There are other analysis methods available, but they all need to be carried out at external laboratories, e.g., measurement of cadaverine levels using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. Cadaverine is a volatile biogenic amine from meat/fish providing an exact measure for meat spoilage level. The amount of cadaverine gas increases in a predictable way over time depending on the type of meat. Food freshness gadgets (such as FoodSniffer) addressed to private consumers do not have the needed reliability to be used by retailers and restaurants. The only way to determine meat/fish freshness at the retailer’s part for the value chain is using human senses, which is very subjective.