Blockchain technology links “blocks” of information in order to create a permanent record. For the poultry industry, blockchain has been used to track the history of a product from farm to fork.
“Blockchain has a lot of interesting and valuable applications when you think about distributed ledger technologies within a supply chain,” Joseph Heinzelmann, the Director of Business Development, Food Safety at Neogen Corporation. “Once that data is in the blockchain, you can look at some of the different silos of data that exist in a supply chain to provide new areas for optimizing efficiency, traceability and even sustainability.”
A new initiative from the National Pork Board uses blockchain to help producers monitor, evaluate and continuously improve sustainability practices. The data, which will remain anonymous, will be visible to consumers and other stakeholders. Sustainability and transparency are two factors increasingly ranked as important by consumers.
In the poultry industry, blockchain has shown the greatest promise for specialty markets, such as organic and free-range eggs. In 2017 and 2018, Cargill piloted a program with “traceable turkeys” that provided consumers with information on how the animal was fed, raised and processed.
New partnership
Neogen Corporation recently announced a partnership with blockchain company Ripe Technology that leverages the new technology for use in food safety diagnostics and animal genomics in the dairy, beef and poultry industries.
“We provide people with information,” Heinzelmann explained. “We look at blockchain as an absolutely powerful way to do that.”
“We are extremely excited that Neogen selected us as their blockchain and ledger technology partner,” Raja Ramachandran, ripe.io’s chief executive officer, said in a statement. “Neogen’s diagnostics and DNA expertise can add the highest degree of transparency and factual correctness for critical issues around authenticity and accuracy on food recalls. We believe this will change the game in food transparency for improved quality assessment from the beginning of the supply chain all the way to consumers.”
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