Officials launch new program that will transform how consumers shop for food: 'A treasure trove'

Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has launched a new web portal for documenting key food information for public access.

Isotopes.au provides "a treasure trove" of data on where food in Australia is produced, its water use during growing, and the emissions caused during its production.

This all comes from measuring the isotopes in food items. Isotopes are atoms with more or fewer neutrons than the element normally has. This variance in elemental make-up can help identify the origins of materials.

Managers are formatting the data to be findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable in order to be as useful as possible to the industry. End users have a lot to gain, too.

"Customers increasingly want to know where and how their food was sourced so they can make ethical and more sustainable choices," said CSIRO lead scientist Dr. Nina Welti. "Isotopes are unique chemical 'fingerprints' that imprint clues of a product's origin, as well as the inputs that went into production, and environmental factors like soil nutrients and groundwater flows."

Isotopes.au was put together in a partnership between Geoscience Australia, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), the National Measurement Institute, and the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC).

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Resources like this provide scientists and companies the tools they need to be transparent about food emissions and inform sustainability initiatives. To that end, the United States and the European Union also have public resources for food data.

The data from Isotopes.au promises to vouch for the sustainability of Australian seafood in particular.

"Data is key to maintaining sustainable practices, reducing carbon emissions and responding to increasing competition for marine space," said Kyaw Kyaw Soe Hlaing, Fisheries Research and Development Corporation General Manager for ICT and Digitalisation.

Soe Hlaing added that isotopes can provide information about "fish movements and food web dynamics," which is useful for fisheries and the aquaculture industry to monitor food as it progresses through the supply chain.