A Personal Experience
with Food Safety – the Need for Track & Trace
It was 2013. I was staying in the posh Grand Hyatt Shanghai.
As the March sun fought through the all too common afternoon haze, I sat in my
room high above the city. Looking down
from above the 80th floor at a river nearby, I pondered what I
wanted for dinner. Pork, for sure, should be on the list. Images of pork dishes
rushed immediately to my head: pork dumplings, chasu, mapo tofu, twice cook
pork, soy sauce braised pork, sweet-and-sour pork - all tantalized my appetite.
But alas, pork was scratched off my list. You might wonder why? Pork is a main staple in
China – so much so that China ranks second in the world in terms of pork
consumption by capita (https://www.pork.org/facts/stats/u-s-pork-exports/world-per-capita-pork-consumption/).
With so much consumption, they should
really know their pork. So why no? The answer is: food safety.
I Love Pork – Just
Not Today Please
Around the time of my visit, there were reports in the news
media of dead pigs being dumped into the Huang Pu Jiang, a major river that ran
through Shanghai (and the very same river that I was looking at from high up). As
the hours passed, more details emerged. The dead pigs were being dumped
illegally into this river by farmers to rid themselves of diseased pigs. What
compounded matters and ultimately led me to delist pork was - these dead and
diseased pigs were being plucked out of the water by unscrupulous opportunists,
then resold as pork. But China is not
alone in food safety. The United Kingdom had to fight “mad cow” disease. The
United States had multiple recalls of farm products such as romaine lettuce. So
what can be done?
Track & Trace
Needed For Food Safety, Authenticity, Conditions at Origin
Food safety requires knowing the entire history of food
source, and hence a mechanism of track and trace is needed. Tracking is the
process and technology needed to tag and record attributes of the food source,
such as time, place, and temperature. Tracing is the process and technology
needed to view the complete history of the tracked food, such as show the
complete journey of the pork chop on your dinner table. The food path can be
long – from farm to processor to storage to grocery – on a variety of
transportation modes. This long path creates risk and vulnerability for the supply
chain. Once track & trace is enabled, there are multiple benefits,
including:
- Food safety : Is the pork sourced from a reputable farm?
- Authenticity: Is your Iberico Jamon real?
- Conditions at origin: How do you know if your food is organic, cage-free, or grass-fed?
Challenges of Current
Track & Trace Technologies
Track & trace process and technologies have been
deployed for decades, including using RFID and serialization technologies. But to
achieve true end-end track & trace, data needs to be collected, processed,
and responded to in real time. Current track & trace technologies cannot do
this for multiple reasons. Some systems are paper based, resulting in erroneous
entries and delayed uploading. Some systems are not real time, resulting in
urgent data that cannot be responded to in real time. Separate systems provide different versions
of the same data, requiring effort to mapping and/or merging, resulting in mistakes
and delays.
Emerging Technology
to the Rescue: Tracking using IoT, Tracing using Blockchain
To address the short comings of exiting track & trace
technologies, we can look at the combination of two emerging technologies to
help : IoT and Blockchain. IoT is used help track all aspects of food,
including place, time, temperature. The pencil and paper method of collecting
data replaced with sensors that send error-free data in real time. Think of IoT
as the eyes, ears, and nose of the track & trace system. In parallel, blockchain
can be used as the central single data store to store the data collected by
IoT. So instead of separate systems that stored its version of the truth at the
time it deems convenient, data now will arrive in a timely, consistent manner. Think
of blockchain as a ledger used to track all of the information gathered by IoT.
Current Examples of
Success: Alpha Acid Brewing, World Bee Project Hive Network
There already are early adopters of blockchain and IoT for
food track & trace. One example is IBM Food Trust, where you can find multiple types of food being tracked & traced, including coffee and precision agriculture. Another example is Alpha Acid
Brewing. Starting from the condition of the raw materials (hops, malt, and
yeast), the entire beer chain is tracked using IoT and traced using
blockchain. In addition in aiding with
creating quality beer, the blockchain can also enhance customer drinking
experience with information (malt, yeast supplier) about the beer they are
drinking.
Conclusion
The case for food supply chain track & trace is not new.
However, the technology that currently supports it is old. With the emergence
of blockchain, it is now time to finally solve this problem to improve food
safety, verify authenticity, and validate the conditions at origin.
