Blockchain technology brings the potential to revolutionize the business of food safety in the poultry industry, but a number of notable hurdles lie between the concept and the reality.
As part of the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association’s 2018 Poultry Processor Workshop, Sean Leighton, Cargill Inc.’s global vice president of food safety, quality and regulatory, spoke about the great potential the emerging technology represents for the world of food safety, transparency and traceability. The event was held on May 10-11 in Orange Beach, Alabama.
Demystifying blockchain
In the past two years, blockchain grabbed attention with the rise of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. The investment boom and bust in the asset and similar cryptocurrencies spurred global interest in the concept and raised questions about how it works.
The blockchain is a continuously growing list of records which are linked and secured. Its purpose is to serve as an open, distributed ledger recording transactions made between multiple parties. Once data is saved in the blockchain, it cannot be changed without the alteration of all other records or the approval of a majority of the parties involved in the ledger.
Leighton said simply blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger. In practice, the blockchain is valuable because it’s hard to hack and it provides a transparent, trustworthy record visible to all parties. However, a blockchain is comparable to a database and the real value lies in its application.
Potential food safety applications
Blockchain can help solve some of the most serious problems facing the food supply chain. Leighton identified four areas of immediate impact.
1. Traceability: The record keeping capability of blockchain makes it easier to track where food originates, where it is shipped, processed, packaged and ultimately sold.
In the event of a recall, it can take a week or more to trace where a contaminated food item or ingredient came from and determine where it wound up. Along with a significant amount of time and effort going into the search, the length of the process and lack of clarity can erode public trust in both companies and foods. Leighton said sometimes companies choose to destroy anything and everything that was potentially contaminated leading to financial loses.
When that food origin and shipping data is digitized and stored in the blockchain, companies can find answers almost instantly. Trials conducted by Cargill, he said, allowed the company to get traceability answers in seconds instead of weeks. This traceability aspect represents real value to companies and to public health.
2. Food fraud: Blockchain ledgers can also prevent food being sold as something that it isn’t. He said this would be helpful in instances where one undesired product is unscrupulously sold as a desirable one. Additionally, it can protect the worth of high-value items. For instance, if the stock keeping unit (SKU) of a premium product – such as Italian extra virgin olive oil – is on the blockchain, it can help prove to the consumer the product inside the bottle is genuine.
3. Food freshness: The technology, paired with digitalized data, enables the storage of all information related to a food product. If an attribute like temperature or humidity is stored along with the other information about food, it can prove to the consumer the product was processed, shipped and stored at the right conditions for optimal freshness and quality. Furthermore, tracking this data can help prevent spoilage and food waste.
4. Transparency: This attribute is the sum of the value of the other benefits of using the distributed ledger. Leighton spoke about Cargill’s own experience with its pilot traceable turkey program, carried out during the fourth quarter of 2017, and how it was able to show consumers what exact farm the turkey they were buying came from. For now, he is unsure if consumers will respond to this particular blockchain-enabled attribute. It is certainly novel, but may not carry a major impact in product differentiation or overall sales.
Limitations of blockchain
Fundamentally, Leighton said, the value of the blockchain is limited to how widely it is used. If only one company is storing information on the blockchain, or if data is not digitized and uploaded to the ledger, then the value of the blockchain is seriously limited.
The modern supply chain is complex and international. Few companies are integrated to the point where they can account for the origins of every ingredient going into their products. The true value of the blockchain is only achieved if and when the technology is used by all the participants in the supply chain.
Furthermore, the blockchain cannot work to its potential without the entry, and digitization, of data. Leighton said there is so much potential data it’s hard to fathom. Data relating to everything from animal breed to animal nutrition to transportation and slaughter to storage conditions can go on the ledger and be used, but without that data the technology is weaker and less useful.
Questions for the future of blockchain
While the potential is great, there are a number of serious questions affecting the future of the technology.
Can consumers and producers be convinced blockchain is valuable? Blockchain can be hard to understand, so the impetus lies with companies to demonstrate its potential value to all possible stakeholders from the farmer growing the birds to the consumer eating them. Leighton said one reason consumers continue to view genetically modified organisms with skepticism is because the value of those advances was never properly demonstrated to them.
Can the data be digitized? Members of the food supply chain must be convinced that tracking all the data surrounding their work and digitizing it is worthwhile for them. Furthermore, decisions must be made about which data should be kept and how it will be collected. This will require the breaking of old habits, like printing and keeping paper records, and the establishment of new processes and technologies for storing and uploading mountains of data.
Is blockchain truly un-hackable? Leighton said the ledger of a blockchain is hard to corrupt, but the rest of the applications running off of it aren’t as secure. The track record of hacks into cryptocurrency trading and banking shows there is work to be done on this front.
Who will build and run the blockchain computing technology? The technology is still in its infancy and there’s no clear direction on who will build and program the fundamental systems. This is problematic because if everyone is using the same computing technology, and can therefore see what everyone else is doing, then there are real concerns about protecting valuable information from competitors as well as overall data privacy.
