Blockchain Is Bringing More Transparency to Food Labels
In December 2018, a series of fresh produce items was recalled, including red leaf lettuce, green leaf lettuce and cauliflower. This prompted other brands to recall their own products that included these vegetables. The problem? They had possibly been infected with a strain of E. coli.
Not long after, there were several reports of people getting sick, many due to supplies of romaine lettuce that had come from the same source as the others: Adam Bros. Farming Inc. in Santa Barbara County, California.
Then, in January 2019, the CDC reported that the romaine lettuce infected with E. coli had been removed completely from the market. Notice how long it took for stores to essentially be cleaned of the contaminated goods?
All these instances could have been prevented and handled much faster if the food and beverage industry had more control over their supply chain. More importantly, there should have been more transparency about where certain products came from and how healthy they truly were.
Queue the concept of blockchain technology, a fast-evolving and modern network designed to provide exactly the kind of transparency the industry needs. In fact, Walmart used blockchain technology to trace romaine lettuce during the E. coli outbreak, resulting in identification within just 2.2 seconds.
How Can Blockchain Help?
The nature of blockchain technology is relatively complex, but it is essentially a proprietary network that works, in many ways, like a peer-to-peer operation. It’s completely secure, encrypted and fraud-proof. A better way to describe it is a secure, digital ledger that contains transactional information.
The reason why it is so secure relates to its name. Chunks of data are stored in the network, called blocks, which include information about a particular transaction. Once they’re in the network, they are virtually unchangeable because they are linked to all other blocks that came before, and all other blocks that come after — hence the “chain” portion of the name. If you wanted to change information, you’d have to do so across all servers or nodes on the network — which is just not possible.
What does this have to do with the supply chain?
A blockchain could also be used to secure highly sensitive and important data while providing a more transparent look at certain elements. A block could contain information about a product’s price, data, location, quality, certification, freshness and much more. Anyone with access to the chain can see where that product was sourced, how many times it exchanged hands and with whom, and eventually where it ended up. That affords a great deal of transparency and unprecedented control over something like fresh produce.
Overall, the technology can provide increased transparency, lower operating costs and decrease risk across the entire industry. Ultimately, it can help prevent situations like the one discussed in the intro by allowing the provider to trace and retract products before they reach the consumer.
Another element of transparency that blockchain enables relates to ingredients and product makeup.
More Transparency for Food Labels
Today, there’s a huge demand coming from consumers to know and understand what goes into certain products. They painstakingly pour over food labels to ensure there is nothing harmful or undesirable contained within. The same is true of organic products and produce, as people want to make sure they’re getting what they’re paying for.
A huge 73 percent of people in the U.S., Europe and Asia made it known they would pay more money for “clean label” products. Furthermore, three-fourths of Americans claim to read the nutritional and ingredient labels on products and believe it is important for them to contain mostly recognizable items. This is warranted after years of product recalls, public lawsuits and mysterious ingredients being dumping into foods and goods. People want to know that what they’re buying and eating is healthy.
Blockchain can provide the necessary transparency by allowing everyone — including consumers — to track products and produce back to their source. Imagine knowing exactly what plot of land and which farm your fresh vegetables came from.
It goes beyond that, however. Someone that wants to support sustainable businesses only can fact-check using blockchain to see what companies adhere to such standards.
Blockchain Is the Future of Supply Chain Logistics
Since the global blockchain market is expected to be worth $20 billion or more by 2024, it looks like the technology will have a huge impact on the world at large. More importantly, it will provide a great many benefits to the supply chain, especially in the food and beverage industry. Products that exchange hands need to be monitored for cleanliness, freshness and health, but that also means contaminants or foodborne illnesses need to be tracked just as accurately. Furthermore, consumers benefit thanks to the increase in transparency for food and ingredient sourcing.
It’s safe to say that blockchain technology is the future of the supply chain and will help immensely with logistics and management.
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