Six months in, HAMTRACE puts proof behind provenance

Last week the HAMTRACE consortium held its first General Assembly online, marking six months since the project began. Partners joined from across Europe to review progress, examine the first deliverables, and agree on the areas where attention is needed as the work moves from set-up into deeper technical issues and stakeholder engagement.

HAMTRACE is working on a simple question: how can we know that a premium dry-cured ham is what it claims to be? Addressing this isn't as straightforward as it seems, and for producers of Protected Designation of Origin and Protected Geographical Indication hams, this is not a peripheral concern. Authenticity is the basis of market value, consumer trust and fair competition. Existing traceability systems often rely on labels and QR codes, which can tell a product's story but cannot, on their own, prove it.

The project's answer combines analytical chemistry, artificial intelligence, blockchain and smart tagging. Elemental and isotopic fingerprinting can help distinguish origin and production characteristics; hyperspectral imaging and other analytical methods can contribute evidence on curing time and regional specificity; blockchain and tamper-proof smart tags can carry that information securely through the value chain. As HAMTRACE Coordinator Prof Manuel Valiente (UAB) puts it: "Europe's premium dry-cured hams represent centuries of culinary heritage, but protecting their authenticity in today's global market requires new approaches."

The General Assembly covered the full range of active work packages. Chemical profiling and baseline work, led by ASICI and UAB, included regulatory review, fraud indicators for PDO and PGI products, and the launch of a country-by-country SWOT and gap analysis, because traceability vulnerabilities are not identical everywhere: they depend on production practices, regulatory frameworks, producer capacity and the particular conditions of each market. The analytical strategy session, led by ADERA with contributions from UAB, UDG, UNIROMA1, ALBA and CETI, addressed the laboratory methods behind HAMTRACE's authentication work, including ICP-MS, XANES and hyperspectral imaging, alongside the less glamorous but essential questions of sampling procedures, protocol consistency and preservation variables.

On the digital side, UDG and DUNAVNET presented progress on the blockchain and smart tag infrastructure, including ecosystem selection, smart tag shortlisting, and the data format protocol that will allow chemical and traceability data to communicate with each other. Getting that architecture right matters: a system that only well-resourced producers can realistically adopt would fall short of the project's ambitions.

Communication and stakeholder engagement were also on the agenda, with Europe for Business and UAB presenting progress on the dissemination and exploitation plan, the website, stakeholder mapping and early outreach. Producers, certification bodies, regulators, technology providers and consumer organisations all need to understand what is being developed well before the tools are too far advanced to adjust.

The first HAMTRACE newsletter is now live at hamtrace.eu. It introduces the project, explains why authenticating premium dry-cured hams matters, and gives an overview of activity since January. The newsletter includes a QR code for joining the HAMTRACE stakeholder community, an increasingly important connection point as the consortium moves towards surveys, workshops, pilot activity and wider engagement with the people who may one day use, regulate or benefit from what HAMTRACE is building.

At six months, the project is still early but the direction is clear: HAMTRACE is not adding another digital label to an already crowded traceability landscape. It is asking whether a stronger chain of evidence, one that links the chemistry of the product with the digital systems that carry its identity, can make premium dry-cured ham's claims stick. That is painstaking work. Happily, ham has never been a product for people in a hurry.