Blockchain in Food Safety and Quality Assurance

Food Safety and Blockchain

The globalization of food production and trade has opened up access to food and increased consumer options, while making the food supply chain longer and more complex. The consumers’ dream of tracking the journey from farm to fork in the perspective of quality and food safety have become less transparent. Even through growers, suppliers and retailers are fully committed to implementing strong food safety measures, increasing lack of transparency can make it difficult to quickly diagnose and address issues, including initiating recalls if they are needed. Nonetheless, it can be difficult to locate the cause of a problem because participants in the food supply chain usually keep their own records (some in more detail than others) and are only required as to the legislations at most to share “one step up, one step down” where these records are frequently paper-based and vulnerable to inaccurate updating. Thus, in an occurrence of an issue, inadequate track and trace capabilities may cause investigation delays that can be costly of deadly. If an origination point can’t be identified, a particular type of food could be completely banned from store shelves when only a single batch was affected and needed to be pulled. Regulators, growers, processors, distributors, suppliers, retailers and consumers would all benefit if delay and waste could be reduced.

Solving the challenges in the food industry will require participants in the food supply chain to work together. If farm origination details, batch numbers, processing data, expiration dates and shipping details can be digitally recorded on blockchain, it may become possible to verify the history, location and status of a food product. This end-to-end traceability would improve transparency and efficiency throughout the food supply chain. Fortunately the blockchain is already beginning to improve the amount of collaboration, trust and transparency across the food industry as a solution to such issues, and it is believed that over time it will increase the traceability and safety of food products. Food is a huge, multi-trillion-dollar industry, where implementing a blockchain-based food safety system across the industry will not happen in a single day, but it may change the food industry faster than you might expect. Hence, focusing on shared value and leveraging insight from collaborators to address different types of needs among various constituents, we can drive adoption to reach critical mass.

What is Blockchain?

Blockchain is a shared immutable ledger for recording the history of transactions which is a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured using cryptography. Each block typically contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block a timestamp and transaction data. By design, a blockchain is inherently resistant to modification of the data. It is "an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way". For use as a distributed ledger, a blockchain is typically managed by a peer-to-peer network collectively adhering to a protocol for validating new blocks. Once recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks, which requires collusion of the network majority.

Blockchains are secure by design and are an example of a distributed computing system with high Byzantine fault tolerance. Decentralized consensus has therefore been achieved with a blockchain. This makes blockchains potentially suitable for the recording of events, medical records and other records management activities, such as identity management, transaction processing, documenting provenance, food traceability or voting. Blockchain was invented by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 for use in the crypto currency bitcoin, as its public transaction ledger. The invention of the blockchain for bitcoin made it the first digital currency to solve the double spending problem without the need of a trusted authority or central server. The bitcoin design has been the inspiration for other applications.

Blockchain Mechanism

To start, here’s the simplest explanation with no metaphors or hyperbole. In the language of cryptocurrency, a block is a record of new transactions which means the location of cryptocurrency, or medical data, or even voting records. Once each block is completed it’s added to the chain, creating a chain of blocks: a blockchain because cryptocurrencies are encrypted, processing any transactions means solving complicated math problems whereas these problems become more difficult over time as the blockchain grows. Hence, people who solve these equations are rewarded with cryptocurrency in a process called “mining.”

As to the technical explanations, the blockchain technology, private key cryptography provides a powerful ownership tool that fulfills authentication requirements where possession of a private key is ownership. It also spares a person from having to share more personal information than they would need to for an exchange, leaving them exposed to hackers. Authentication is not enough. Authorization needs a distributed, peer-to-peer network as a starting point where a distributed network reduces the risk of centralized corruption or failure and such distributed network must also be committed to the transaction network's recordkeeping and security. Authorizing transactions is a result of the entire network applying the rules upon which it was designed.

Authentication and authorization supplied in this way allow for interactions in the digital world without relying on (expensive) trust. Today, entrepreneurs in industries around the world have woken up to the implications of this development, because with blockchain unimagined, new and powerful digital relationships are possible. Due to these reasons the blockchain technology is often described as the backbone for a transaction layer for the Internet, the foundation of the Internet of Value. In fact, the idea that cryptographic keys and shared ledgers can incentivize users to secure and more formalize digital relationships that has imaginations running wild where everyone from governments to IT firms to banks is seeking to build this transaction layer.

Blockchain in Food Supply Chain

In the food supply chain, numerous types of food (i.e. imported foodstuffs) can exchange hands 10 times or more between the food’s place of origin and the end point. Current food regulations requires each step in the supply chain to have a record of the data for one step forward and one step back in the supply chain, which are useful  information but it can often make it difficult to ensure accurate and reliable records throughout the entire chain because it doesn’t capture the entire process. Whereas food blockchains actually applying cryptographic technology that can be used to monitor and track various foods in the supply chain. It includes gathering data from “farm to fork” or “gate to plate” where, all the steps necessary to produce and sell all the foods we enjoy. This new technology can help in food recalls, identifying potential introduction of foodborne illness-causing bacteria, viruses or chemicals, and it can also help the battle against food waste. Blockchain technology digitizes food data and allows the information to be held by more than one person or party, where no more paper logs or hand-written records. With the implementation of blockchain, all the data is put into electronic form and is accessible by computers, smartphones and tablets.

Furthermore, blockchain may be able to effectively trace and destroy the contaminated foods that often lead to food borne illness outbreaks, whereas the current practices lead to excess food waste. Currently in the case of an outbreak, we try to isolate the exact field and lot number that might be causing illness. Additionally, all the food that might be contaminated has to be pulled from shelves or recalled. For example, a retailer becomes aware of an issue with some of the vegetables on its shelves. If the condition of that vegetable was digitally recorded on the blockchain during its journey from farm to fork, network participants could view the entire history of that vegetable to quickly triangulate on the root of the problem. If necessary, a selective recall of that vegetable from that specific batch could then be executed in an efficient manner. In fact, when a farmer grow cucumbers and if they end up as an ingredient in a deli salad, all the information on where or how this cucumber was grown, who transported it, and how it ended up at your favorite deli all will be stored and quickly accessible. The cucumber data will be held in a permanent ledger that cannot be altered, making it extremely secure. In many current food production information systems, data is shared with a centralized source, and that one source owns all the data, where blockchain can be used to distributes data to many sources, allowing ownership of the information to spread wider. Hence, data builds up like stacking building blocks each time a “block of information” is added to the information record about the specific food item, the chain grows, and the blockchain will contain all the previous data along with the new information. Consequently, blockchain technology can aid in tracking food sources in cases of foodborne illnesses, detecting food fraud and limiting food waste. But another “blockbuster” ability for blockchain is how much it will support food supply transparency for consumers, where future of blockchain includes making the digital data on foods accessible to consumers. With this type of information at consumers’ fingertips, they could know everything about a grocery store apple from orchard to shopping cart.