The Rise of the East

I have just attended Norwegian Institute of International Affairs' seminar on "The Rise of the East". My prime reason was to see Hans Rosling, the father of entertaining statistics, sharing his insight.

Of course, the overall topic of how Norway and rising populations in Asia can interact was interesting as well.

My work with traceability brought me to south east Asia in 2007-2008, but the later financial downturn made TraceTracker pull out from that market. Now there are signs that things are picking up again.

Part of the topic for today's seminar was the population growth, where, according to Hans Rosling's analysis, the "old world" will be left with 1.5 of the projected 10 billion people. In such a context, the need for traceability on food products may become a neccessity - we can no longer throw away food to be on the safe side when food scares occur. Instead we must use traceability to know exactly what is affected, so that surgical recalls can be performed.