News

Food Traceability 4.0 refers to the application of fourth industrial revolution (or Industry 4.0) technologies to ensure food authenticity, safety, and high food quality. This paper gives an update on the application of Traceability 4.0 in the fruit and vegetable sector, focusing on relevant Industry 4.0 enablers, especially Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, blockchain, and Big Data. Traceability 4.0 has significant potential to improve quality and safety of many fruits and vegetables, enhance transparency, reduce the costs of food recalls, and decrease waste and loss. A barrier to its implementation is that most of the advanced technologies have not yet gone beyond the laboratory scale, and hence have high implementation costs and lack of adaptability to industrial environments.

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This review is a chapter in a book entitled "Blockchain in Finance, Marketing and Others". It explains the workings of blockchain, and its applicability in monitoring and verifying the data and information in the food chain from farm to fork. It covers how blockchain can address the challenges faced in ensuring food supplies deal with food safety, food fraud and food waste issues, as well as its benefits.

Read the full chapter here

The NCSC (National Cyber Security Centre) is a UK Government organisation, which offers practical guidance on cybersecurity and responds to cybersecurity incidents. It has issued advice to anyone thinking about using blockchain in their supply chain. The advice is contained in a White Paper looking at distributed ledger technology, and whether this is the appropriate technology and the best tool for the job, as well as some of the misconceptions around the technology.

Read the blockchain blog, and the White Paper.

The continued depletion of wild fish stocks is leading to increased strain on the aquaculture sector in terms of sustaining the supply of fish and seafood to global markets. This article examines how digital transformation can help support and meet expansion needs of the fisheries/aquaculture industries that includes exploiting and harnessing ICT (information and communications technology), IoT (internet of things), Cloud-edge computing, AI (artificial intelligence), machine learning, immersive technologies and blockchain. Digital technologies can bring significant operational benefits for the global food chain, improving efficiencies and productivity, reducing waste, contamination and food fraud.

Read the full open access article here

This study examines the use of blockchain from farm to fork to increase food safety/security and integrity by increasing the transparency of the monitoring systems in the supply chain. Blockchain ensures that all the data from farm to fork is shared, but cannot be tampered with, by the different actors along the supply chain.TinyML is a new technology device, which is embedded in the food consignement and monitors any abnormalities as a result of spoilage, faulty machine operation, or attempts to tamper with the monitoring devices.

Read the open access paper here

Blockchain technology has emerged as a promising technology providing numerous benefits that improve trust in the extended food supply chains (FSCs). It can enhance traceability, enable more efficient recall, and aids in risk reduction of counterfeits and other forms of illicit trade. This open-access review presents the findings from a systematic study of 61 journal articles. The main benefits of blockchain technology in FCSs are improved food traceability, enhanced collaboration, operational efficiencies and streamlined food trading processes. Potential challenges include technical, organisational and regulatory issues. The review also examines the theoretical and practical implications of the study, and presents several ideas for future research.  

Read the full research paper

Michel Neilsen, professor of analytical chemistry at Wageningen University & Research, was recently interviewed about an EU-funded project to develop smartphone-based food screening capabilities.

The FoodSmartphone project aims to develop smartphone-based (bio)analytical sensing and diagnostics tools for simplified on-site rapid pre-screening of food. The three-year project is scheduled to wrap up in December.

Nielsen explains that the project works to develop a device that can be attached or connected to a shopper's smartphone to test for allergens, pesticides, and whether the product is organic. The team hopes to empower shoppers to test food at the shelf.

The interview was recently published by Horizon, the EU Research and Innovation magazine from the European Commission, and can be read here.

This FAO publication provides a comprehensive introduction to blockchain, covers smart contracts, and explores how they relate to blockchain with an example of their use in seafood value chains. It examines major development and operational considerations for blockchain applications. It also analyses the seafood supply chain with considerations on flag, coastal, port, processing and market countries. The study identifies general control elements (critical tracking events and corresponding key data elements) that form the basis for traceability monitoring and acquisition, and summarises th suitability of blockchain application. It also investigates considerations for legality, transparency, species fraud and food safety. 

Read either the news article or the full FAO Study.

A pilot programme is applying blockchain to Australia's Victoria’s citrus production, which exported 104,000 tonnes during the 2018/19 season, worth A$162m. The long-term goal is to apply the technology to all Australian citrus exports. The pilot programme is funded by Agriculture Victoria, and will aim to improve a number of key factors, including determining the fruit’s origin, protection against counterfeiting, location of origin, secure market access and rapid food recalls.  Read the article here 

For a more general discussion about how blockchain can assist in ensuring the authenticity of foods read this article.

In response to many recent problems of adulteration and safety concerns in the infant food sector, Danone is applying blockchain, serialisation and aggregation technology to its infant formula brands, where all information will be incorporated into two QR codes on its branded products. An outer QR code can be scanned at any time throughout the supply chain to provide batch and unit numbers and other logistical information to enable the product to be traced back to all production information. An inner QR code is placed behind a tamper-proof seal, and can only be scanned once after purchase by the consumer. to provide after sales support and services. Danone will be launching its 'Track & Connect' service first in China, followed by Germany, Australia and New Zealand later this year.

Read the article here

Using blockchain in the food chain has the potential to improve traceability of the supply chain, enabling users to view the relevant data digitally, remove duplication in reporting and paperwork, and use smart contracts to ensure the process is automated where feasible. Then, all of this drives speed of moving data through the system, so recalls could be managed in minutes rather than weeks, and suppliers can be paid immediately. In this article New Food’s Editor, Bethan Grylls discusses with Julie Pierce, Director of Openness, Data & Digital at the FSA how this technology has been used so far and whether it is trustworthy. 

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In an effort to boost consumption of tea and consumer confidence, the Indian Tea Board has been considering using blockchain technology to ensure traceability along the supply chain from tea plantation to auction and retail sale. It is hoped that this will prevent adulteration and reduce lower quality tea being sold, which has had an impact on consumer confidence and consumption. Examples of this are the use of added dyes to hide poor quality and increase the 'glossiness' of tea, and the large scale sale of cheaper Nepalese tea sold as the more expensive Indian Darjeeling tea. Blockchain would permit consumers to access information as to the origin of the tea in terms of region or garden, and know that the integrity of the tea has been preserved.

 Read the article here

Ecuadorian prawn producers, who are members of the Sustainable Shrimp Partnership (SSP), have teamed up with the Food Trust ecosystem, which will provide a blockchain database to safeguard traceability and integrity from farm to fork so that consumers can have complete trust and assurance on what they are buying. SSP’s members, which comprise of responsible prawn producers based in Ecuador, will enter data about how the prawn is produced onto the blockchain system. Ultimately, retailers around the world will be able to see this data and trace it at every stage so that they can ensure the quality of the prawn they are selling to consumers. SSP plans to enable consumer access via an app, enabling individuals to view provenance data about the prawns they buy.

  Read the article here

NSF International, working with a retailer, are launching a blockchain traceability service for the beef supply chain. The service will link details of individual cattle on farms all the way through to consumer purchases. Each animal will be given a unique identifier built into a RFID ear tag, along with a sample of DNA and its GPS farm location. As the animal matures, details of its weight and age are entered into the blockchain database, with all the other details as it is processed along the supply chain. This will allow all the supply chain partners to access the blockchain database to improve transparency and traceability. Information about an animal's provenance and quality will even be available to consumers via a mobile phone app and QR code on the pack of beef.   

  Read the article here

Blockchain technology has the potential to transform the food industry and provide a new way of dealing with food safety and food fraud. This article by Sterling Crew is taken from his article in March edition of Food Science and Technology (free on line for IFST members). It examines its application to enhance transparency, tracking and traceability in the food supply chain, and considers how it could help to build consumer confidence and  give a more secure food supply system.

Read the article here