AU Professor Helps Ensure Food Safety At Summer Olympics

Dr. Yifen Wang, assistant professor of biosystems engineering at Auburn University, said helping to ensure the food safety for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing is a scary task - to put it mildly.

Wang is part of the Experts of Beijing Olympic Food Safety Expert Committee, a 13-member consortium that advises the Beijing Food Administration Office, which is in charge of all the food served before, during and after the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.

“It’s kind of like a mission impossible to me,“ he said. Tracking and keeping the food safe is made easier by a system, called Radio Frequency Identification, that Wang suggested Beijing use.

Food is fitted with a sensor that inventories the food and records the food’s temperature and time.

The tag can tell if the food gets above the recommended temperature and for how long, he said.