What if you could track the shipment of a particular grocery item all the way back to the original producer, and do it in a matter of seconds?
If you were dealing with potential food contamination issues — like Rose Acres recently experienced with their 207 million egg recall — and needed to find out whether a particular food shipment was part of a recall, that could take a few days.
Normally you would have to wait for the supplier to contact you with the necessary information. Meanwhile, you’ve pulled all possibly-contaminated items off the shelf while you wait for the correct information to arrive.
With blockchain supply chain development, you could scan the barcodes of a specific item — a carton of eggs, a case of strawberries, a bag of spinach — and be immediately alerted whether it needed to be pulled or if it was safe to sell and consume.
What is blockchain?
Blockchain is essentially blocks of data assembled into a long chain. It’s a spreadsheet that’s encrypted, shared, and synchronized among hundreds, if not thousands, of computers. When a new transaction (a block) is made, it gets added to the spreadsheet (the chain). The block becomes a permanent part of the chain, and it can’t be changed or removed.
More importantly, because this blockchain is not centrally stored, there’s no single point of failure or weakness. It’s not controlled by one centralized entity, so it can’t be hacked or compromised. And because the chain is shared on a network of computers, it’s nearly impossible to hack and change a single record, because the change would immediately be recognized by all the other computers. The change would be flagged as suspicious. Not just flagged as suspicious, it wouldn’t be added to the block.
But the data is still secure because only the people involved in a particular transaction get a decryption key to see the transaction details with blockchain solutions.
How can blockchain help grocery
Let’s go back to our recall example: in this particular case, we’ll have a chain of custody and transfer, from the moment the product is packaged and scanned into the system. It gets loaded onto a truck, shipped to a packaging center, shipped to a distribution center, repackaged and shipped to a grocer’s warehouse, and finally shipped out to a particular grocery store.
Each transaction along the way has been added to the blockchain, but it’s only accessible to the original food manufacturer, the individual grocery store, the grocer’s central office, and any service providers involved in shipping, cleaning, etc. So, when the manager scans that particular case of eggs, the blockchain is unlocked, and she can see that yes, these eggs (or strawberries or spinach) are part of the national recall.
From Farms to Your Table
It can reduce foodborne contaminations that might happen in the shipping and handling of a product, such as whether a refrigerator truck malfunctioned in transit and a truckload of chicken or raw shrimp was allowed to get warm enough to begin bacterial growth. The anomaly might show up in the grocery store manager’s electronic report, and with a few clicks, he can see that there were temperature anomalies in the shipping process.
Blockchain can even have an impact on farm-to-table eating, which could improve margins of grocery stores that sell organic foods. A recent article in Forbes suggested that even consumers can use a smartphone app to scan an item’s QR code and read a report about where their food was grown, what pesticides were used, and how it compares to other food on the shelves.
We already know that health-conscious consumers will pay more for organic foods because they trust that the products have met certain standards and followed certain practices, even though there are no federal regulations that stipulate what “organic” actually means.
How much more would a consumer pay for food that they knew was actually organic by looking at the reports showing the production methods, products used in its growing and manufacturing, and its chain of custody? This becomes a value-added service that consumers may pay more for or can be a way for organic and higher-priced food brands to compete against the lower-priced competitors without lowering their prices.
We’ll be exploring blockchain more in the future, especially its impact on retail, grocery and the supply chains that fuel them
If you own a manufacturing or e-commerce business, undeniably, you must use a supply chain management solution.
You can now develop the next-gen personalized blockchain supply chain Development solutions!
Blockchain and the Internet of things (IoT) are two recent technological advancements transforming different industries.
Industries are finding Blockchain and IoT two most important strategic technology trends in 2020, According to IDC, 20 percent IoT deployment involve basic levels of blockchain services enabled.
Blockchain is a type of distributed ledger which provides characteristics like traceability, auditability, security, and efficient collaboration.
IoT is a network of smart physical objects and things capable of connecting to that network to send and receive data.
In the following sections, find out key value drivers that the combination of blockchain and IoT provides for contemporary supply chains.
Global Supply Chain FinancingSupply chains involving parties across borders and cross-border transactions require voluminous paperwork and bureaucracy.
BlockchainFirm is a supply chain management software company that offers dynamic supply chain management software and with the right software on board, you can increase your productivityhttps://www.quora.com/What-are-the-features-of-a-good-supply-chain-management-SCM-software
Food traceability is the most awaited concept in the growing health conscious population.
According to the latest report, the chances of dishonest activities are possible in any part of the supply chain.
The red meat is vulnerable to many problems including illegal slaughtering, improper storage, and prolonged preservation.Here food traceability becomes a necessity to know if the meat we consume is actually qualified as a safe product.
Tracefood provides end to end traceability solutions to make your supplychain more transparent building complete trustworthiness with Blockchain solution for beef and Blockchain in Pork IndustryThe meat and poultry sector can be broadly divided into 3 categories: beef, pork, and poultry.
Another report states that semi cooked or ready to cook spicy meals were particularly vulnerable to this crime, as the swap cannot be found due to being overpowered by other flavours.There are many cases reported in UK where they transport horses posing them as leisure utility and slaughter them in illegal places and mix them up with other meat.Diseases Many countries have prohibited the import of pork that have been given ractopamine - a feed additive drug used to increase he muscle of the pigs instead of fat.
Downfall in the health of the farm leads to pigs easily vulnerable to swine flu and other dangerous illnesses that spread up rapidly.Trade issuesPork industry is prone to many wet markets which show no interest in quality and legitimacy.
Meat supply chain management has been made simpler these days right with the integration of blockchain in meat despite the complexities involved…The global meat production, processing and supply involves a vast set of elements and data and so that it is vital for every supply chain system to track, trace and present the data.
Even though it seems to be inevitable for the smooth processing of the meat supply chains, it is not that much easier to achieve.Yet, the community of meat manufacturers, processors, retailers, packers and the consumers very much rely on this vital information and they demand it the most than anything.So, what would be the viable solution for this challenge?
Yes, it is the technology blockchain in meat that could help us in addressing out this major traceability challenge appropriate to the meat supply chains today.
Since blockchain is basically a public ledger of information that helps store the processed data in any sector, it fits the most in this case.The blockchain technology for meat has come up as a decentralized network helping each and every network participant to be aware of the overall system data in the supply chains right from the production to the table.Not only the tracking and tracing of data can be done via the meat supply chain blockchain; Beyond that, the technology finds its importance as well in customizing the overall data flow between the producers and the consumers thus making the entire value chains efficient ever.How does the meat supply chain blockchain account for data transparency?With the rising challenge of fraudulence and misconceptions in the food industry, there comes an inevitable need and demand for the production of organic and highly sustainable food items from the consumers’ side.In order for the organizations to meet this unavoidable demand over time, craving out for the best technology solutions that could help strategize the overall supply chain cycles has turned to be an essential aspect so as to ensure the sustainability of the products in the industry.
Here comes a need for the enterprises to provide complete end-to-end data transparency to the end users in order to make them satisfied on the go with ease.But this is not just a simple task to do as the supply chain systems are very much complex to retrieve data in nature.
Yet, we have a wonderful technology which is nothing but the blockchain in meat that has been evolving out in disclosing the overall data about the products to the consumer community with ease.By the way, the global food safety and provenance levels will get improve a bit forward and so that attaining out a fraudulence free food market is quite possible with blockchain.What we (tracefood) are and where we stand today?Tracefood is a food technology solutions provider operating out with a vast level of experience and expertise in the field of food supply chain management.
