Do you remember the horse meat in beef products? That was food fraud. Food fraud is growing and will be one of the biggest problems in the future in the food sector. For example, up to 87% red snapper (fish) is mislabeled. Food supply chains are becoming more global, therefore it gets more difficult to trace ingredients from farm to fork.

On the very basis of buying a product or interacting with a person is trust. Trust in the supplier/dealer that you actually receive what you have paid for. However, what the seller displays to you or what you see does not necessarily match with what you get. How can you be sure? Who approves to you that the product really is what it claims to be?

Currently, it is hardly impossible for the consumer to verify information supplied by the seller. Lack of trust arises because often in the supply chain, information is not available or credible.

Therefore, establishing traceability and trust in and within the food supply chain is key. Digitalization and blockchain technology are making it possible. This is how it works:

A trusted organization, e.g. the government, checks an institute for its competence of correctly checking food quality. The DLG TestService GmbH is such an institution. The credential of competence is then written into the KILT protocol, a digital database based on blockchain technology. This means, information cannot be altered, only new information can be added, and it is accessible to everyone. The tested institute may then give credentials to others. For example, a so-called claimer (e.g. “peanut free” granola bar) wants to get a credible approval (credential/certificate) that the bar is truly peanut free. The peanut bar is sent to the test institute, which will check and validate that the bar is peanut free and therefore the claim made by the claimer is true. The institute then gives a credential to the peanut bar. This is also published in the blockchain KILT protocol.

The buyer of the bar (consumer) wants to check if it can be trusted that the bar is really peanut free, because he has a peanut allergy and it would be fatal if there was mislabeling. The consumer (verifier) can consult the KILT database, in which is confirmed that firstly, the bar has been checked by a third-party lab and secondly that this lab is competent for testing correctly. Because this information is blockchain based, he can be sure that the information has not been hacked and therefore is true.

However, it could be that the testing institution finds out that the bar is not peanut free anymore, because the manufacturer has been cheating. The institution can then go to the KILT protocol and withdraw the “peanut free” certificate of the bar. In this case, the consumer then sees that the bar was once peanut free, but now this label cannot be trusted anymore because it has been withdrawn.

The KILT database not only helps with transparency and trust, it also assists in food recalls and warnings, which are other big issues. Such information published and handled by KILT can directly be assessed via a QR code on the product. Before the consumer even buys the product, he is already warned about possible issues.

In 2017, the Blockchain Food Safety Alliance emerged as a joint effort of Walmart, JD.com, IBM and Tsinghua University to create standards for blockchain based data collection about the origin, safety and authenticity of food to provide real-time traceability, transparency, trust and safety throughout the supply chain.

Blockchain can not only be applied for cryptocurrency, but also for tracking and securing data. This is already reality and will emerge to be a powerful tool against food fraud. However, some scepticism will remain and attention still needs to be given. Yes, blockchain data can hardly be manipulated, but the input data can still be fake news.

Image Source: JJ Ying on Unsplash

Author: Nicola Schinz