Chicken, farm and blockchain

Do you know for sure what you have eaten today was actually a fresh and healthy food? I know, you think “Yes”, but let me tell you about the 13th of March 2018:

• An Oregon company apparently donated more than 11 tons of chia seeds to a food bank in the Feeding America network after it discovered there was “evidence of rodent activity” in its stock.
  Advise for customers: “Anyone who has consumed any of the chia seeds (…) should immediately seek medical attention (…)”.
• Starwest Botanicals recalls organic cardamom for Salmonella. The product was sold nationwide (…).
  Advise for customers: “Older adults, infants, and persons with weakened immune systems are (…) likely to develop a severe illness.”.
• Mississippi catfish company recalls 34.5 tons of catfish.
  Advise for customers: Consumers who have purchased these products are urged not to consume them. These products should be thrown away (…).

Source: foodsafetynews.com.

These are three product recalls affecting thousands just in the United States. It’s not an isolated case as we have product recalls on a daily basis. What’s a product recall? Here’s a formal definition:

A product recall is a request to return a product after the discovery of safety issues or product defects that might endanger the consumer.

Produced, processed, distributed, sold and upss…

Nothing speaks better than a story so let’s run through a specific and rather the oversimplified scenario:

Farms — sold wholesale 2000 chickens to suppliers
Suppliers — sold further to 10 different processors
Processors — packaged different parts of the chicken and made 6000 packages
Distributors — distributed the packages to 50 different grocery shops across the country
Retailers — sold to multiple consumers that cannot be traced back

And now customers get sick and it is discovered that the chicken was contaminated. We are facing a big challenge as we need to:

• trace the contaminated packages back to the farm und alarm each affected stakeholder in the supply chain about the contamination
• give the customers a way to verify if the purchased product is part of the contaminated batch

Depending on the level of transparency in the supply chain, this process may last days or weeks. You can read more about transparency (or rather a lack thereof) in the supply chain industry here: The path to transparency in supply chain.

It may take days, even with a full transparency and using a conventional record keeping to trace a package back to the farm where it was produced.

Days with full exposure of the contaminated food to the customers.

This is a big problem.

It may take days to trace a package back to the farm where it was produced, even with a full transparency and using a conventional record keeping.

“In God we trust. All others, bring data” -W.E. Deming

We need a digital list of transactions that is available to all participating stakeholders that cannot be altered. If you think Bitcoin, you are close. This is the feature of a blockchain — peer-to-peer network of decentralized computers to process the complex blockchain algorithms and maintain such distributed digital list of transactions.

In the case of the global food supply chain, all participants — farmers, suppliers, processors, distributors, retailers, regulators, and consumers — can gain access to known information regarding the origin and state of food for their transactions.

With that kind of transparency in the chain, the tracibility becomes a matter of seconds. Customers can easily verify and trace back the food they have purchased. Furthermore, with smart integration with their credit card and electronic receipts, they can be automatically alarmed for the purchased products if a contamination discovery is made.

From solution to product

Companies such as VeChain Foundation, Waltonchain_EN and OriginTrail are actively working on blockchain solutions addressing the food traceability problems. Walmart Labs — the biggest retailer in United States — is also actively researching this field and supporting projects with the same mission all over the world. It has recently awarded an European company OriginTrail for its blockchain supply chain protocol which, in essence, enables customers to verify the provenance of every item sold on the platform and the local producers to transparently communicate the state of the package among all stake holders in the supply chain.

Do you know any other blockchain projects focusing on food safety and traceability? Let us know in the comments section!

If you are interested in transparency in supply chain, be sure to check out this post by Maja Voje: Supply Chain Transparency Renaissance Is Driven by Blockchain Technology.