Food giants including Walmart, Nestle and Unilever have announced a collaboration with IBM in order to trim down the growing contamination in the food industry with the help of blockchain. In a bid to strengthen confidence among consumers while purchasing their choice of food products. The corporation will enable food businesses globally to use the blockchain network in order to trace the source of contamination.
Implementing Transparency in the System
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), one in ten people every year succumb to illness due to increasing contamination in food. Chemicals, toxins, bacteria, parasites and viruses along with 31 agents have been cited as the main source of these diseases. European Union’s food safety commissioner called for a summit during the increasing contamination in the eggs that were infected with the fipronil pesticide, in August, 2017.
Customers mainly suffer at the hands of toxic food offered in the market globally. The corporation plans to solve the problem of increasing contamination through the distributed ledger technology. The distributed ledger technology enables the end users to record the details of the transactions digitally instead of maintain record physically. This technology will ask the food suppliers to record the information related to the movement, origin and condition of the food products. Through this method, the food giants and other food companies can conveniently trace the source of contamination within a few seconds.
Benefits of the Blockchain Collaboration
Brigid McDermott, the vice president of blockchain business development in IBM stated that the opportunity shared by the corporation is expected to deliver transparency throughout the ecosystem. The blockchain specialist in IBM stated that developing a blockchain network will help the ecosystem to grow and provide a lucrative solution. She further added that the corporation is trying to provide transparency throughout the ecosystem in order to cater to the growing problem of food contamination. Adoption of this distributed ledger technology will enable the food organizations to run relatively safe systems and safe food supply chains.
Previously, IBM was working in coordination with Walmart in order to track the movement of the food products. Frank Yiannas, the vice president for food safety in Walmart showed how the food products and the movement of these products can be tracked within 3 second during a conference of shareholders in June. He further stated that the blockchain technology will enable end-to-end transparency in the system among the food producers and suppliers. He also mentioned that through the adoption of this technology and system, all the participants will be able to share the information confidently.
