{"id":707,"date":"2020-05-19T11:54:42","date_gmt":"2020-05-19T10:54:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/?p=707"},"modified":"2020-05-19T11:54:42","modified_gmt":"2020-05-19T10:54:42","slug":"blockchain-securing-your-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/2020\/05\/19\/blockchain-securing-your-food\/","title":{"rendered":"Blockchain: securing your food?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since lockdown began, and supermarket shelves emptied, many of us have started to think about food supply chains, perhaps for the first time. The strain that a pandemic could put on shipping and production, in addition to concerns about the health of workers in factories, has brought the issue to the fore. However, the public - who are increasingly interested in where our food comes from, and what happens to it along the way - are also realising how opaque this process is. <\/em>Here Mic<\/a>hael Rogerson<\/a>\u00a0examines the benefits of blockchain for creating visibility, and therefore accountability, in food supply chains. This was originally published in The Conversation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Food supply chains were vulnerable long before the coronavirus pandemic. Recent scandals have ranged from modern slavery\u00a0in Vietnamese fisheries<\/a>\u00a0to the persistent problem of\u00a0child labour<\/a>\u00a0in the cocoa industry. Perhaps the most well known fraud was the UK\u2019s\u00a0horsemeat scandal<\/a>\u00a0of 2013, where up to 60% of products labelled as beef were actually horse.<\/p>\n

UK supermarkets have also been found selling\u00a0contaminated chicken<\/a>\u00a0on numerous occasions, while a\u00a0longstanding issue<\/a>\u00a0of romaine lettuce in the US causing\u00a0E coli<\/em>\u00a0only recently ended. Such scandals have made the public much more interested in the food supply chain, not\u00a0to mention<\/a>\u00a0the\u00a0impact of food production<\/a>\u00a0on the environment.<\/p>\n

Food manufacturers can give consumers detailed information on where our foods have come from using blockchains \u2013 the tamper-proof online technology for logging information that is the basis of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Some manufactures are doing this, but many have been slow to adopt this technology for various reasons. There are suggestions that coronavirus could be the gamechanger \u2013 but will it be?<\/p>\n

Block power<\/h4>\n

Certain jurisdictions\u00a0such as the EU<\/a>\u00a0now require that food products be traceable to source. In the absence of blockchains, the most common way of doing this has been to use\u00a0digital tagging systems<\/a>\u00a0such as RFID (radio frequency identification) or QR (quick response) codes. They enable vendor firms to know where products have been and when, but they don\u2019t let them see what actually happens at each node in a supply chain. As a result, consumers receive little information about their food beyond nutritional content and the country of production.<\/p>\n

This points to a\u00a0competitive advantage<\/a>\u00a0for manufacturers offering richer and more reliable information to vendors and consumers, which is why some have been combining digital tagging with\u00a0blockchains<\/a>. Firms like Wal-Mart\u00a0have been conducting<\/a>\u00a0high-profile trials\u00a0that have<\/a>\u00a0reduced to a matter of seconds the time it takes to trace a product\u2019s origin. Yet they have been reticent to share most of the results.<\/p>\n

This has made it harder for the industry to learn, which has not helped this technology to move forward. To this end, we\u2019ve just published some\u00a0new research<\/a>\u00a0that looks at some blockchain trials by some other players in this space.<\/p>\n

One case study comes on the back of various\u00a0Chinese infant formula scandals<\/a>\u00a0beginning in 2008 that killed at least 18 babies, affected 300,000 and destroyed confidence in a product that many parents relied upon. The culprit was a chemical called melanine, but it was difficult to ascertain where in the supply chain it was being added to the formula.<\/p>\n

To\u00a0reassure parents<\/a>, Nestl\u00e9 hired Shanghai-based blockchain developer Techrock to incorporate the technology into its NAN A2 baby formula. They first created product packaging with an inbuilt RFID chip and antenna. Then the firms throughout Nestl\u00e9\u2019s supply chain recorded data on a public blockchain, including details of ingredients, where they came from, and where the product was produced.<\/p>\n

Once the formula was on supermarket shelves, consumers could scan the chip using mobile phones to get all the information \u2013 even including a picture of what the package should look like. The products are also designed so that the antenna breaks when they are opened, to reassure customers that products haven\u2019t been tampered with.<\/p>\n

We looked at two similar systems in farming and fisheries that also allow consumers to scan products using phone apps. In farming, Australian consumers get access to information on various grain products overseen by commodity management platform Agridigital. Farmers and other operators record where grain was grown, when and where it was milled, and where and how it was transported to supermarket shelves. RFID tags are then used to monitor the movement of products. The blockchain makes sure the data meets best practice \u2013 if not, it can\u2019t be labelled as organic, for example.<\/p>\n

A partnership between World Wildlife Fund and Fijian blockchain provider TraSeable focuses on sustainable fisheries. This time, data is recorded on where fish are caught, the route that boats take, catch logs and crew details. Once fish are unloaded, they are tracked to stores with QR tags.<\/p>\n

Remaining challenges<\/h4>\n

These trials show how blockchains can make supply chains more visible for consumers, though a number of issues need to be solved if they are to be universally adopted. Supply chains need to be as digitised as possible. Many systems still rely on people to record and enter data. This makes the system fallible and less trustworthy, and calls into question all the data stored on that blockchain.<\/p>\n

There are no agreed standards or governance. The industry is going to have to move towards one system, particularly so that consumers can check many products using one smartphone app.<\/p>\n

Some food companies may still be reluctant to use blockchains because\u00a0they don\u2019t trust<\/a>\u00a0them, and also because adopting these systems will inevitably come at a price. For cheaper products like fresh produce, companies may fear that consumers won\u2019t pay a necessary price premium.<\/p>\n

Blockchains are potentially useful in the coronavirus crisis. For example, they are\u00a0already used<\/a>\u00a0to collect and securely share data on factory conditions in the meat industry. With numerous processing plants closed because of outbreaks in places like\u00a0Germany<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0the US<\/a>, these systems can potentially make it easier to share data on working conditions to ensure that suppliers are minimising risks. This could give consumers peace of mind that workers in plants have been tested.<\/p>\n

There\u00a0have been<\/a>\u00a0some media reports that such uses are\u00a0spurring on the adoption<\/a>\u00a0of these systems. It\u2019s an interesting development, though it\u2019s too early to say whether it will be a gamechanger. There is little evidence, for example, that meat can carry the virus, so the technology\u2019s benefits in this regard may be limited. For now, we need to watch developments closely, while continuing to address the other challenges around getting the industry fully onside.<\/p>\n

Rogerson, M.<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Parry, G.C.<\/a>\u00a0(2020), \"Blockchain: case studies in food supply chain visibility\",\u00a0Supply Chain Management<\/a>, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print.\u00a0https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1108\/SCM-08-2019-0300<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Read our press release here.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Photo by\u00a0Brooke Lark<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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