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If you're a food maker and you're not familiar with blockchain technology, it's time to catch up. The enabling technology that underpins Bitcoin was created by blockchain. However, blockchain goes much beyond that, since there is increasing talk about how technology can revolutionize how business is conducted. Although the blockchain's original adoption was driven by financial benefits, its fundamental qualities make it a highly promising technology for enhancing food traceability solutions.
The Blockchain Technology
Information can be shared and stored in an open virtual environment among a network of users through the usage of Blockchain technology. It enables consumers to view every transaction in real time and simultaneously. Blockchain is a "shared, programmable, cryptographically secure and therefore trusted ledger which no single user controls and which can be inspected by anyone," according to the World Economic Forum.
In the food supply chain, data, such as farm-origination details, factory details, processing data, storage temperatures, shipping details, and expiration dates, are digitally linked to food products and uploaded into the blockchain along their route. Each transaction's data is agreed upon by all network participants, and each transaction is given a digital certificate. After that, this turns into an irreversible record that cannot be changed.
The Blockchain for Food Traceability
The lack of traceability and transparency in the supply chain is the main issue. As a result, buyers are not provided with sufficient information regarding the background of the food items they purchase. Furthermore, the way the supply chain is managed renders it very vulnerable to fraudulent activities and inefficient. The goal of the Transgenie project is to strengthen the supply chain's severe lack of food traceability. Transgenie offers a strong blockchain-based food safety management system that increases efficiency, speed, trust, and transparency above everything else. Using the blockchain's immutable ledger, it will be able to trace products with confidence all the way through the supply chain.
Every tier of the food supply chain is able to access certificates thanks to the Transgenie protocol certificate authentication protocol. Everybody receives a certificate, from the farmer to the supplier to the retailer, and these attesting records serve as a guarantee of excellence and compliance with legal requirements. The product barcode or QR code connects these certificates. Therefore, the entire production history will be shown when a customer uses his phone to scan the product's code after pulling it from the shelf. This blockchain-based food tracking system guarantees both consumer safety and transparency for all parties involved in the food supply chain.
The Benefits of Blockchain for Food Industry
Transparency
One of the main advantages of blockchain technology is its public nature. In the food business, blockchain technology offers information transparency, traceability, and provenance. For instance, every transaction for a single item in a food chain blockchain may be viewed and verified at any moment. In the form of a digital ledger made available by the blockchain, this gives each link in the supply chain a clearer understanding of the food's journey.
Security
In the food business, blockchain technology offers a permanent record of transactions that are subsequently collected into immutable blocks. After that, participants agree to confirm and approve transactions, which makes it extremely impossible for fraud to occur. Food fraud is less likely to happen and would be simpler to identify if it did. In an attempt to conceal the real origin and movement of the product through the food chain blockchain, firms are unable to tamper with or alter information on food products, which reassures consumers.
Decentralized
The food tracking blockchain runs on an open, impartial platform that prevents transaction authorization by outside parties. Instead, it includes a set of guidelines that all parties involved—users and system operators alike—must abide by. In intricate supply chains with low levels of trust and extremely difficult-to-gauge compliance, this technique is extremely important. The blockchain has been dubbed "The Trust Machine" by The Economist.
Real-Time Information
Every participant in the food sector has access to the same ledger records due to the distributed nature of blockchain technology. Updated data is simultaneously visible to all users within the network. This gives the entire supply chain the right to respond more quickly to any threats to fraud or incidents involving food safety.
The potential advantage that the blockchain offers to all parties involved in the supply chain—processors, growers, distributors, suppliers, retailers, and regulators—is one of its distinctive features. Here are a few of them.
Producers: Producers are able to quickly detect and stop any possible harm before it reaches the retailer in the event that there are attempts to tamper with a food item as it travels through the supply chain.
Retailers: Should a food product that poses a risk to public health find its way onto the market, it can be promptly detected and taken off the shelves. This removes the requirement for pricey batch recalls.
Customers: Because of the blockchain's transparency and openness, consumers can feel more certain that the food they are purchasing and consuming is precisely what the label claims to be. At the moment, 75% of customers don't think food labels are accurate.
Blockchain to Improve Food Safety
If a merchant could observe and verify 100% of the time the location of every food item's growth, processing, handling, storage, and inspection, it would be unrealistic. It is impossible to follow every step of its journey from the farm to the retailer. But with blockchain traceability, this is 100% possible because of its potential. The food chain blockchain eliminates gaps in food product history, location, and status by displaying the entire picture. For example, in the event that a store discovers a potentially fatal problem with rock melons, users of the blockchain network can quickly examine the complete history of those melons in order to identify the source of the issue. When needed, a prompt recall is conducted for the impacted rock melon from that particular farm or batch.
"How quickly can a food product be recalled?" is the query. Walmart, IBM, and Tsinghua University inked a deal in October 2017 to investigate food supply chain authenticity and traceability using blockchain technology. Walmart investigated how quickly it could track mangoes in one of its stores back to its original farm before utilizing blockchain for the experiment, and it took six days, eighteen hours, and twenty-six minutes. In the case of blockchain, it took 2.2 seconds.
Blockchain Bringing Back Trust to the Food Industry
Most of the time, food makers and processors have trouble confirming where their ingredients come from. There should be comprehensive information regarding the ingredients and manufacturing method of any food product if the processor wants the public to have faith in its quality and origin.
Since the blockchain enables private and secure information sharing between growers and processors while also allowing the supply chain to verify the information, this is not an issue for it. To put it another way, it provides a Web-of-Trust framework that enables network users to assess and verify claims made regarding food, including those on the food's provenance, nutritional value, sustainability, and other topics.
But for this system to function, the data it is given must be correct. If food processors are entering accurate data, the results will be correct; if the data originates from an incorrect source, the entire objective will be defeated. Data is now kept in centralized databases or on paper, both of which are vulnerable to fraud and human mistakes. Sensors can be used as one solution to this issue. Sensors are a useful tool for food processors to obtain precise and comprehensive data that is then shared with all parties involved in the supply chain.
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