Food Safety with Blockchain technology
The chain of block technology continues to expand every day to more sectors of the world economy in order to meet logistics needs as complex as the immutable tracking of large data and the unambiguous and efficient tracking of finished products mainly by large companies. producers.
Thus we have seen before the great utility that this disruptive technology has had in the field of medicine, insurance, maritime transport and now recently in the food security of the main powers.
Recently the food safety control agency of the UK government has reported that it successfully completed a pilot test with an unidentified local slaughterhouse for the inspection of meat in the supply chain using the Blockchain technology.
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) indicated in a press release that it is the first time that Blockchain has been used as a regulatory tool to guarantee food compliance in the food sector. The meat from the pilot slaughterhouse was traced in an unidentified authorized block chain and the data was accessible to both the regulatory body and the slaughterhouse and authorized participants.
With this result, the FSA plans to extend the test to other areas of the supply chain as it is the farmers since the agency has reasons after the successful tests that the blockchain technology can add real value to a part of the food industry.
However, this is not the first time that block chain technology is used in the food sector. Recently the giant supermarket chain Walmart indicated that it has been using the blockchain to track its food products within the United States and China.
Walmart Inc., the US retail corporation and the world's largest discount retailer, indicated on April 23 that Bloomberg was ready to use Blockchain technology in its live food business.
In collaboration with IBM they began testing the technology to identify and remove foods from their product list in 2016 with a system based on Blockchain, the company indicated that it can supposedly verify any product information and thanks to decentralized technology is protected from attacks by piracy and data alterations to ensure timely and adequate supply in their stores.
On the other hand, Alibaba, the world's largest e-commerce company, partnered with Australia's national postal service in March this year to use Blockchain to address the importation of counterfeit food into China.
The General Manager of Alibaba Group Australia and New Zealand, Maggie Zhou, announced that the company has completed strategic alliances for the construction of a supply chain supported by blockchain technology that allows to monitor the production cycle of food from the farm to the dish to reduce food fraud in China.
The project, called the Food Trust Framework, will be built based on an accounting book distributed to suppliers in Australia that will be used throughout the supply chain.
Finally another example of the use of the chain of blocks in the supply chain of food security is found in Taiwan.
E-commerce retailer OwlTing is using a chain of blocks based on Ethereum for the origin of food after a series of food-grade scandals in recent years.
Last year it was revealed that the expiration dates of the frozen seafood products were handled by the distributor in 2013. In 2014, several incidents related to adulterated cooking oil arose, forcing the Taiwanese authorities to reconsider a revision system. of meals of 25 years.
Called OwlChain, the blockchain of provenance of food aims to achieve greater transparency, immutability and integrity for a new benchmark in food security among the various food supply chains.
The Swiss startup of Blockchain FoodBlockchain.XYZ is also developing a solution based on Ethereum in the region. Solutions for waste in the food supply chain are also being addressed with innovative decentralized technology.