A New Era of Food Transparency Powered by Blockchain

Abstract

ply chain, but in reality it isn’t a chain at all. The food system today—that is, the way we get our food from farm to table— has evolved into a complex network that is interdependent on many entities. And while there is no question that today’s food system provides consumers with a more diverse, convenient, and economical source of food, it also presents new challenges. For example, in today’s food system, the output from one ingredient producer could end up in thousands of products on a grocery store shelf. We saw evidence of this during the peanut butter Salmonella outbreak in 2008 and the E. coli illnesses caused by contaminated flour in 2016. Today there is no widely adopted industry standard for how each segment of the food system (farmer, processor, distributor, retailer, etc.) tracks and records data for food traceability purposes. Many simply record their data on paper, and while some are using digital methods, these methods do not enable communication with other parties in the food system. Thus, the system is limited to A NEW ERA OF FOOD TRANSPARENCY POWERED BY BLOCKCHAIN