Food traceability is a must for any food and beverage brand if they want to provide their customers with authentic and safe products. It’s a system designed to help us keep track of where our food has come from and where it has been on its journey to the store.
As we saw in our previous article, food traceability requires information to be logged at every point in the supply chain. Current food tracing processes are slow and open to human error or even tampering! This increases the risk of a large-scale public health crisis in the event of contamination.
Recently, the blockchain has entered the conversation and seems poised to revolutionize the way we track our produce. Today, we’re going to look at just how businesses can utilize the blockchain to improve their food traceability efforts.
The blockchain offers an exciting evolution in the way we track food. It’s believed that the blockchain can solve key traceability issues such as food fraud, safety recalls, and can even help to eliminate supply chain inefficiencies (something we’ll look at later).
Food safety is the most important aspect of food traceability. In the event of a public health crisis, we need to be able to quickly identify and cut off the source of contamination. The blockchain can help us to do this far quicker than traditional methods, as we saw with Walmart’s blockchain trial.
In the trial, it took a team almost a week to track down all the required data to fully trace a package of sliced mangoes from the farm to stores in the US. When performing the same procedure through the blockchain, it took just 2.2 seconds!
The ability to track our food super quickly could prevent major foodborne public health issues by identifying the source of contamination and removing contaminated products from the supply chain before they reach the consumer.
Combining blockchain with the Internet of Things (IoT) creates an immutable record of all transactions along the supply chain. This technology bridges the gap in the current system that causes the different parties in the supply chain to fall out of alignment.
The ability to prove the origin of your produce is a legal requirement in most countries. Proving your produce came from where you say it did would take a lot of work using traditional methods. However, produce recorded on the blockchain will automatically have all the data you need added to the ledger, with no way to alter that data. This saves the producer time and effort while ensuring there’s no room for food fraud.
Processing plants are constantly receiving shipments from all around the world. Manually tracking what came from where can be tricky with so much product to sort through. This creates room for mistakes that could completely derail traceability efforts.
With the IoT and blockchain, manufacturers receive 100% visibility for incoming stock and transport updates. Shipments can be marked with an RFID tag or even a simple barcode that will link the manufacturer to all the traceability information they might need. This is extremely useful during recalls as the technology can identify exactly where the affected food is and where it has been.
Retailers using blockchain-powered traceability can sell with confidence. For starters, they don’t need to worry about promising something to their customers that they can’t deliver due to shaky supply chain tracking.
Retailers benefit from a fully transparent system that allows them to offer a consistent quality of goods, while also allowing consumers to do their own research on the products they purchase.
For complete transparency when it comes to food traceability, we need to see any pit stops the produce took along its journey. This includes where it was stored, how it was stored, conditions in the storage facility, and all that fun stuff.
With IoT and blockchain, this can all be done automatically by using sensors to track shipments throughout the warehouse. As the produce passes an IoT sensor, it can instantly update the ledger to show if the goods were kept in ideal conditions, if the facility is certified to hold those items, when the last audit was carried out, and the rating of that audit.
As you can imagine, the scale of this task is astronomical. There are thousands of suppliers, distributors, farmers, retailers, logistics firms, and storage facilities spanning the globe. For traceability to be effective, every single touchpoint needs to be proactive in recording and managing traceability data. Yet it’s not just the size of the task that is slowing down blockchain adoption.
The FDA is still trying to figure out requirements for food traceability. It’s expected that, once the details have been ironed out, we will see widespread adoption of blockchain food traceability practices. However, the currently proposed rule would only require companies to keep electronic records, not necessarily keep those records on the blockchain.
There’s also a conversation around using a permissionless blockchain that is open to everyone, or a permissioned blockchain that is limited to authorized users only. Permissionless blockchain seems to be preferred by regulators, however, it does negate the idea of a secure, immutable way of tracking products since anyone could dig about in there.
Finally, we need to think about the accessibility of blockchain technology. It’s going to be easy for large companies like Walmart to adopt and deploy new technology, but it could be an expensive nightmare for smaller businesses. We need to make sure every business within the network has the technological ability and know-how to access the blockchain and ensure it stays effective.
Blockchain is already being used to reduce fraud in the wine industry, where counterfeiting is a huge issue. Plantaze is a vineyard in Montenegro that produces 22 million kilos of grapes annually and sells more than 16 million bottled products in over 40 countries. In 2018, the vineyard worked together with OriginTrail and TagItSmart to track over 15,000 unique wine bottles and prevent counterfeiting.
Food giant Nestlé is looking to improve their traceability via a public blockchain that will allow consumers to see how their food is moved throughout the supply chain. They are the first major brand to adopt a public, permissionless blockchain to aid their traceability, sustainability, and ethical efforts.
In March 2018, Carrefour launched a blockchain initiative to trace its chickens, tomatoes, eggs, milk, salmon, and cheese. Apart from ensuring additional transparency and safety for consumers, the blockchain project also aimed to act as a showcase for suppliers. Consumers only have to scan a QR code on the product to get access to a range of extra information.
One of the world’s biggest fresh fruit and vegetable suppliers, Del Monte, is putting their money where their mouth is when it comes to blockchain traceability. In October 2022, the company invested a 39% stake in the Jordanian and UK-based tech company Decapolis. Through this partnership, they’re looking to launch a traceability label on all of their products that allows customers to see exactly what has gone into the product and where those ingredients have been, from the moment they were planted to the moment they were purchased.
Buffalo Market has partnered with the Helium network to build a reliable and immutable traceability system throughout everything we do.
To learn more, check out our previous blog or get in touch with us to see how the blockchain can improve your business!