A NEW ERA OF FOOD - Am MIT spezialisierte KI-Forschung

A NEW ERA OF FOOD
TRANSPARENCY
POWERED BY
BLOCKCHAIN

FRANK YIANNAS

For the past ten years, I have had the privilege of serving as vice president of
food safety at Walmart. I am responsible for overseeing the delivery of safe
foods to 260 million customers every week across 28 countries and nearly
12,000 stores. At Walmart, we strive every day to help our customers save
money so they can live better. Jedoch, when it comes to food, operating in so
many countries around the world presents a daunting challenge. Our cus-
tomers rely on Walmart to act as their trusted buying agent, which means that
they trust—and indeed expect—that we know as much as possible about the
food we sell in our stores and online. To honor that trust, we are always looking
for ways to advance food safety and improve public health.

People often talk about the food sup-
ply chain, but in reality it isn’t a chain at
alle. The food system today—that is, Die
way we get our food from farm to table—
has evolved into a complex network that
is interdependent on many entities. And
while there is no question that today’s
food system provides consumers with a
more diverse, convenient, and economi-
cal source of food, it also presents new
Herausforderungen. Zum Beispiel, in today’s food
System, the output from one ingredient
producer could end up in thousands of
products on a grocery store shelf. We saw

evidence of this during the peanut butter
Salmonella outbreak in 2008 and the E.
coli illnesses caused by contaminated
flour in 2016.

Today there is no widely adopted
industry standard for how each segment
of the food system (farmer, Prozessor,
distributor, retailer, usw.) tracks and
records data for food traceability purpos-
es. Many simply record their data on
Papier, and while some are using digital
Methoden, these methods do not enable
communication with other parties in the
food system. Daher, the system is limited to

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traceability capabilities that are often
described as “one step forward and one
step back.” Piecing together traceability
data by sifting through hundreds or even
thousands of documents during a food-
borne outbreak can be slow and compli-
cated, and it all too often is not an eﬀec-
tive way of identifying and informing
action through lessons learned to prevent
future outbreaks. These ineﬃciencies and
complexities are one of many reasons we
at Walmart were looking for a technolog-
ical solution to help us achieve enhanced
food traceability and transparency.

An outbreak of E. coli 0157:H7 in the
United States back in 2006 that was
caused by contaminated spinach was an
Beispiel, and a warning, of the need for
better traceability capabilities within the
food system. As I am writing this, another
multistate outbreak of E. coli involving
leafy greens, this time romaine lettuce, Ist
being investigated, and it is clear that not
much has changed in regard to food
traceability since 2006. The FDA stated in
its update on the recent romaine out-
break that “FDA scientists and investiga-
tors are working with federal and state

partners and companies as quickly as
possible to collect, review and analyze
hundreds of records in an attempt to
trace back the source of the contaminated
romaine lettuce.”1. In the same update,
the FDA claimed that people fell ill begin-
ning on March 13. Jedoch, the CDC did
not issue the first public advisory inform-
ing consumers and retailers not to con-
sume or sell romaine lettuce from the
Yuma, Arizona, region until April 13. In
2006, it took the FDA approximately two
weeks to trace the issue back to the
source. As of this writing, it has been over
two months since the first CDC advisory
but a definitive source or sources of the
illness has not yet been identified. Der
current E. coli outbreak suggests that, In
Die 12 years since the spinach outbreak,
our food system’s traceability capabilities
have not significantly improved or kept
up with the digital modernization that
has happened in the world around us.
These statements are not a criticism of the
good work our nation’s health oﬃcials do
on a daily basis; they are, Jedoch, a cri-
tique on the food system’s ability to track

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Frank Yiannas is Vice President of Food Safety for Wal-mart. In that capacity he oversees all
food safety, as well as other public health functions, for the world’s largest food retailer,
serves over 240 million customers around the world on a weekly basis. Yiannas is the 2007
recipient of the NSF International Lifetime Achievement Award for Leadership in Food Safety
und das 2015 Industry Professional Food Safety Hero Award by STOP Foodborne Illness. Er
is also a past president of the International Association for Food Protection, a past vice-chair
of the Global Food Safety Initiative, and an adjunct professor in the Food Safety Program at
Michigan State University.

Yiannas is the author of the books Food Safety Culture, Creating a Behavior-based Food
Safety Management System, and Food Safety = Behavior: 30 Proven Techniques to Enhance
Employee Compliance, by Springer Scientific..

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Frank Yiannas

and trace food—and an urgent call to
Aktion.

Further illustrating the need for
improvement is the fact that more and
more food product recalls in recent years
have been caused by a single ingredient.
These ingredient-driven recalls can last a
month or more, due to ineﬃcient and dis-
parate traceability systems that do not
have set standards and do not communi-
cate with each other. Der 2009 outbreak,
which was caused by peanut paste pro-
duced by the Peanut Corporation of
Amerika (PCA), lasted for months as sup-
pliers slowly became aware that their
products contained PCA’s peanut paste.
Am Ende, nearly 4,000 food items were
recalled. A digital, transparent food trace-
ability system could have identified where
PCA’s ingredients had been used in much
less time.

Creating a digitized farm-to-fork
industry standard enabled by blockchain
would likely enhance, accelerate, Und
optimize food traceability throughout the
entire food supply.

BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY
AND FOOD

Blockchain is a technology that enables
the creation of a decentralized, distrib-
uted, and trusted digital ledger that can be
used to record transactions from multiple
entities across a complex network. A
record on a blockchain cannot be altered
retroactively without the alteration of all
preceding blocks and the consensus of the
Netzwerk.

How to enhance food traceability and
transparency for our customers is one
challenge that Walmart has been working
An. Blockchain is often associated with
cryptocurrency, but it is being looked at
more and more as a solution to food-sup-
ply problems that will enhance trust and
Transparenz. Walmart believes that using
blockchain could usher in a new era of

food traceability, and that it could benefit
areas beyond food safety, such as improv-
ing sustainability by reducing waste and
lowering costs by eliminating food system
eﬃciencies. Darüber hinaus, using blockchain
could enable the capture of data beyond
mere traceability attributes (where and
Wann), including those that promote
greater transparency (How was a food
produced? Was it sustainably grown?).

Having worked in the food profes-
sion for more than 30 Jahre, I have to be
candid. I’ve been pursuing better trace-
ability systems for many years, and when
I first heard about blockchain and consid-
ered the role it might play in enhancing
food traceability, I was a bit skeptical. Es
was only after I started learning more
about blockchain, such as how it digitizes
Information, and more about its unique
Merkmale (immutability, consensus, usw.)
that I started to change my mind. After we
successfully piloted the technology, ICH
moved from being a blockchain skeptic to
a blockchain believer.

Ist

truth

While you usually hear about
blockchain technologies that are imple-
mented for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin,
Die
enterprise-level
Das
blockchain networks are starting to
emerge that have a wide range of use cases
in the private and public sectors. Für
Beispiel, financial institutions are evalu-
ating blockchain to improve the tracking
and tracing of real currencies; transporta-
tion and logistics industries can use it to
improve tracking of containers or pack-
Alter; and regulatory agencies can use it to
improve
import control eﬃciency.
Blockchain also can free up capital flows,
improve eﬃciencies, reduce costs, Und
build trust across a broad range of stake-
holders and ecosystems.

Why do I believe that it is time for a
technology like blockchain to transform
the food sector and usher in a new era of
Transparenz? Erste, I know
it can
improve our ability to definitively link

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A New Era of Food Transparency Powered by Blockchain

WHY BLOCKCHAIN?

A blockchain-based ledger is a shared digital ledger used to record the history of trans-
Aktionen, which cannot be altered. In a typical transactional relationship, multiple parties
are involved in the transactions along a supply chain, and every party typically has their
own version of the truth. This environment is fraught with errors, duplication, Und
redundancies that create inefficiencies along the supply chain. This is especially true in
the food sector, where there are many small to mid-sized enterprises that even today
maintain paper-based records. A single shared ledger that is tamper evident alleviates
many of these inefficiencies and allows all parties participating in the series of transac-
tions to have a view into one version of the truth. There are elements that are unique to
blockchain networks that make the technology a game-changer in terms of promoting
greater trust and transparency in food. These elements are:

Decentralized: In a blockchain network, multiple nodes hold a copy of the same data,
which eliminates the risk of a single point of failure in the network. This is a key differ-
ence between a blockchain network and a centralized repository (or authority) of data.

Immutable: By using cryptographic hashes and encryption, data is written onto the
blockchain in a way that cannot be altered without detection. Not only does this
increase confidence in the data itself, it also incentivizes all stakeholders responsible for
putting their data on the blockchain to ensure the accuracy of that data the first time
and every time it is uploaded.

Consensus: To write data onto the blockchain requires consensus from all parties
involved in a transaction. This ensures that a single entity does not control the
blockchain and also allows for the permissioning of data to meet the business needs of
the blockchain participants.

Democratic: The governance of the blockchain can be implemented and enforced in a
democratic and transparent manner, whereby a diverse group of stakeholders partici-
pating in the blockchain network have an equal voice on issues such as data ownership,
rights, data sharing, and protection. Zusätzlich, as opposed to a central governing
authority benefiting from the insights, all participants in a blockchain system can get
smarter together, thereby creating what we refer to as shared value.

foodborne outbreaks to their causative
food vehicle, which could result in fewer
and smaller outbreaks and fewer people
harmed. It could allow for more eﬃcient
analysis to determine the root cause of an
outbreak, which also would inform future
prevention eﬀorts. The U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention estimates
Das 48 million consumers get sick from
foodborne illnesses each year. The global
estimates by
the World Health
Organization are even more concerning.
Darüber hinaus, the economic impact of such

outbreaks in the United States alone
ranges from $55 billion to $93 Milliarde
(Scharf, 2012). The inability to track and
trace food eﬃciently back to the source of
the contamination is one main factor
contributing to these statistics.

Food fraud is another growing con-
cern across the global food industry.
From counterfeit olive oil to adulterated
Milch, it has been estimated that food fraud
incidents cost the industry between $10 billion and $15 billion annually.
(Johnson, 2014). One reason for this is

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Frank Yiannas

that the supply chain is only as secure as
its weakest link, and cargo theft is on the
rise. One of the reasons unscrupulous
suppliers are willing to commit food
fraud is because they do not fear being
caught, due to the anonymity of how food
is produced and where it comes from.
Having a digital, real-time ability to mon-
itor and trace food as it flows from farm
to store will be a strong deterrent for such
fraudulent activities, as it will create a dig-
ital footprint that leads back to a fraud-
ster’s door.

Food

the U.S.

Food-safety regulations are becoming
more stringent across the globe. Für
Safety
Beispiel,
Modernization Act established additional
record-keeping requirements, including a
section on enhancing the tracking and
tracing of foods. This will inevitably raise
the bar on the minimum expectations for
food traceability in the coming years.

From a sustainability perspective,
greater traceability and transparency
would likely allow food system partici-
pants to optimize supply chains and
reduce food waste. The current estimate is
that nearly one-third of the food pro-
duced globally goes to waste. In the U.S.,
the amount of food waste each year equals
$161.1 Milliarde (EPA). We know we can do
better. We know we must do better. Von
having more targeted recalls, we can both
reduce the amount of unaﬀected food we
discard and protect public health more
eﬀectively. By having longer shelf-life and
providing the consumer with clearer mes-
sages about the safety and quality of food,
we can reduce post-purchase consumer
waste.

Letzten Endes,

blockchain-enabled
traceability will create greater food trans-
parency, which will lead to greater
incentivize every
accountability and
stakeholder in the food system to do the
right thing every time. Greater accounta-
bility will in turn encourage stakeholders
to take greater responsibility for food

safety, which will promote greater trust
within the supply chain. Consumers are
already demanding this, and it’s up to the
industry to step up to meet this challenge.

WALMART’S PROOF OF
CONCEPTS

In October 2016, Walmart and IBM
announced two proof of concepts (POCs)
to demonstrate that blockchain technolo-
gy provides a viable way to trace and
authenticate food from farm to store with
speed and precision. The POCs focused
on two elements of the blockchain solu-
tion: traceability and authenticity.

Mangoes and Traceability

Consider a typical mango supply chain,
starting with the seedling that takes five to
eight years to mature. Once the mango is
harvested, it is sorted and containerized
before being loaded on a truck and
shipped, often across borders. The mango
then gets further processed—cleaned,
sometimes sliced, and put
into a
clamshell—before being palletized, put on
a Walmart truck, and shipped to a
Walmart store. At the store, our customer
will pick up the mango, check out, Und
take the fruit home to enjoy. Even for a
fairly simple food product like a mango,
you can see that it’s a long and complicat-
ed supply chain with many stakeholders
beteiligt.

I wanted to find out what it would
take to identify the grower of a single
package of sliced mangoes oﬀered at one
of our stores. Also, I bought a package of
mangoes at a local Walmart store in
northwestern Arkansas, and during a
meeting with my leadership team I asked
them to find out which farm those partic-
ular mangoes came from. I told them that
I was going to time them. They began by
calling our immediate supplier to see if
this information was readily available. In

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A New Era of Food Transparency Powered by Blockchain

Figur 1. Life of a Mango

today’s regulatory environment, Die
expectation is that stakeholders maintain
records for one step up and one step
down. This means that each stakeholder
in the mango supply chain had to work
with the next node in the chain to identify
the provenance of my mangoes. It took us
6 Tage, 18 hours, Und 26 minutes to iden-
tify the farm that harvested those man-
geht! While this was pretty good by
industry standards, where an average
traceback can take weeks or even months,
in today’s digital age, where information
is available at our fingertips, this was
unacceptable for Walmart.

One of the key advantages of
blockchain that Walmart and IBM want-
ed to prove was its ability to provide
product visibility from farm to store. Der
spinach outbreak was evidence that alert-
ing stores in a matter of seconds that they
needed to remove a product would be
invaluable to public safety. To prove this
IBM used
feature, Walmart

Und

blockchain technology to trace mangoes
from farms in Mexico to two stores in
Nordamerika. For this test, each stake-
holder in the supply chain, einschließlich
farms, packing houses, Transport
Firmen, importers/exporters, Verfahren-
ing facilities, distribution centers, Und
stores, put data on the blockchain. Der
blockchain then
linked the datasets
together to tell the story of the journey
this mango took from farm to store. Der
result was a steep reduction in the time it
took to trace mangoes—from 7 days to
2.2 seconds! That is what I have referred
to as “food traceability @ the speed of
thought.”

We used mangoes for two reasons.
Erste, the produce supply chain is one of
the most complicated in the food system.
Zweite, even though the produce supply
chain is very safe when one considers per-
capita consumption rates, when a food-
borne illness does occur, produce is one
of the most frequent causes. The ability to

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Frank Yiannas

Figur 2. Pork Supply Chain in China

pinpoint and remove a product from the
shelves
immediately after becoming
aware of a food safety issue could prevent
illnesses, and also reduce the likelihood
that the wrong sources will be erroneous-
ly implicated.

The amazing power of this innova-
tion is that, once the foundational infra-
structure enabling greater transparency
and traceability is built, it is relatively easy
to leverage the same infrastructure to col-
lect additional data about the food, aus
time-temperature tracking for improved
freshness to tracking certificates for food
safety audits.

Another benefit we observed during
the mango POC was increased visibility
into the speed at which food flows
through the supply chain. Zum Beispiel, Es
is easy to blame the farmer for the poor
quality or lower shelf life of foods that
reach our stores. Jedoch, during this
POC, we learned that the mangoes sat at
border control for four days before reach-
ing our direct supplier. That’s four addi-
tional days of shelf life we could give back
to our customers, resulting in better qual-

ity products and less food waste. Using
blockchain will allow us to identify where
in our supply chain we can improve eﬃ-
ciencies and to do more “fact-finding”
than “fault-finding” when issues do arise.

Pork and Authenticity

Food fraud is being identified increasing-
ly and consumers are aware of this trend.
Proving that blockchain could be used to
build confidence in the authenticity of
our products was as important as proving
traceability. We wanted to demonstrate
that blockchain could be used to do more
than trace food and we wanted to engage
our international partners as well. Also, In
addition to our “mango POC,” we con-
ducted a POC to trace pork from farms in
China to a Walmart store, also in China.
We began by collecting information
about the animals at the farm in China,
then at the slaughterhouse, and on
through their transport and the Animal
Product Quarantine Certificate Exchange.
Prior to conducting the POC, a label was
placed on each case of pork at the pro-

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A New Era of Food Transparency Powered by Blockchain

cessing facility, but it contained minimal
Information. For the POC we added a QR
Code (barcode) to each case, welche
allowed any trusted user to verify the
traceability and authenticity of the prod-
uct at any point between packaging the
product into the case and its arrival at our
stores. Our Walmart associates could
scan the label in the distribution center to
digitally view the purchase order and
shipment details, and thereby verify that
the product was flowing through the cor-
rect distribution center. Our associates
previously had to verify the details on
Papier, which made us vulnerable to
Fehler.

scanned

Even more exciting is that the veteri-
nary certificates were
Zu
blockchain, rather than physical copies
being handed to a truck driver. The cer-
tificates were stored on the blockchain as
an immutable digital copy that was acces-
sible to any trusted user on the network.
Permissioned food safety professionals in
our organization had instant access to the
veterinary certificates at any time, welche
eliminated having to chase down paper
records. In the POC we reduced the
amount of time it took to access the cer-
tificates and increased confidence in those
records. In China, where trust and
issues, Wir
authenticity are serious
brought trust to the food system.

FOUNDATION PROGRAM

Over the summer of 2017, after demon-
strating that blockchain was a viable way
to trace and authenticate food, we realized
that if we sought to build a proprietary
system unique to Walmart and our supply
chains, we would fail. The power of
blockchain networks comes from collabo-
rative ecosystems that enable a diverse
group of stakeholders to participate in the
Netzwerk. No single retailer or single food
company, regardless of size, can (oder
should?) do this alone. We understood

that these were still the early days of
blockchain technologies being applied in
an enterprise environment and that we
needed to encourage innovation in this
space rather than stifle it.

daher, CEO Doug McMillon,
contacted the leaders of some of the
world’s most influential food companies
to inform them of our accomplishments
and ask them to participate in additional
testing and scaling of the solution.
Partnership was critical to creating an
offen, collaborative solution that would
work for everyone. If each company
attempted to create solutions in isolation
we would end up right back where we
started on this journey, with systems that
don’t talk to each other and datasets that
cannot be linked across the supply chain.
We recognized early on that pre-compet-
itive collaboration was essential in this
space if we were to deliver a safer,
smarter, and more transparent food sys-
tem to our customers. Aus diesem Grund, Wir
invited even our competitors to join us in
scaling this innovation. Darüber hinaus, Es
would have been cost-prohibitive for each
supplier to implement and participate in a
separate blockchain network for each
retailer with whom they conduct busi-
ness.

Today we have a coalition of ten
Foundation Partners comprised of both
suppliers and retailers, which include
Walmart, Kroger, Wegmans, Tyson,
Driscolls, Nestle, Unilever, Danone,
McCormick, and Dole. It was equally
important to ensure that the self-gover-
nance structure we built around the
blockchain network to resolve issues such
as data ownership, privacy, and access
rights was done collaboratively with the
Foundation Partners in order to prevent
any one stakeholder, like Walmart or our
solution provider IBM, unequal authority
to make decisions.

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Frank Yiannas

GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF
BLOCKCHAIN SOLUTIONS

To promote a more collaborative approach to blockchain food applications, reduce
duplication of effort, and promote more efficient and interoperable solutions, Walmart
has developed the following guiding principles on how we believe blockchain solutions
should develop for food.

Solve for a Business Case: When pursuing a new technology application, wir glauben
there should be a clear business case for doing so. Don’t chase blockchain but consider
when it is deemed more effective than existing technologies or approaches. This also
means that one should begin with the business problem that is being addressed in
mind—not the technology.

Collaborate: As the food system is complex and interdependent on numerous stake-
Inhaber, we believe the development of blockchain solutions should be collaborative
efforts, as no single company or sector can digitize the food system alone. Arbeiten
together, we can reduce duplication of effort, redundancies, and gain food system effi-
ciencies by promoting more effective and interoperable solutions.

Interoperate: A collaborative, digital traceability network does not exist today, Weil
companies have digitized their areas of the food system in isolation and created digital
information silos. To prevent a repeat of the past, we believe blockchain food networks
must be designed so that they are interoperable with legacy systems as well as other
blockchain networks, and are based on existing standards, such as GS1.

Create Shared Value: One beneficial feature of blockchain is that it democratizes infor-
mation. In order to take advantage of this feature, blockchain solutions should be
designed and operated in a way that provides benefits and adds value to all stakeholders
in the food continuum (farmers, processors, distributions, retailers, usw.). Making sure
that all stakeholders benefit is critical to creating a blockchain ecosystem that partici-
pants want to join and participate in voluntarily. It will also allow the entire food system
to get better together, rather than individual entities getting better alone.

Leverage: Whenever possible, blockchain solutions within an organization should uti-
lize and build on existing technologies, processes, Standards (such as GS1), and invest-
ment should be made in digitizing the food system. This will allow blockchain solutions
to develop in a cost-effective and less disruptive manner.

Establish Strong Governance: As blockchain solutions are less reliant on a central
authority, blockchain networks must clearly establish rules for self-governance, inkl-
ing membership, data ownership, rules of conduct, and privacy. Blockchain is about
trust.

Make It Affordable: During these challenging economic times, consumers worldwide
are trying to make their food dollar go farther so they can feed their families and loved
ones. As advocates for the customer, we believe blockchain solutions should always
undergo a thorough cost-benefit analysis to ensure that they truly deliver benefits while
protecting against ineffectiveness and unnecessary cost. Zusätzlich, we believe
blockchain solutions should have little to no cost to use, and that any amount users pay
to participate are proportional to the benefits they derive from the solution.

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A New Era of Food Transparency Powered by Blockchain

Scaling Trust

lowing:

Walmart, IBM, and the Foundation
Partners have moved rapidly to scale, test,
and implement blockchain-enabled trace-
ability on a number of strategically select-
ed SKUs, including both private and sup-
plier brands. As of May 2018, Walmart
has already tracked nearly two dozen
SKUs involving 2.6 million food packages
across 166,000 traceability events on the
blockchain. Außerdem, we have
achieved this in a production environ-
ment—that is, beyond proof of concepts
or pilots. After hearing about the
Foundation’s successes to date, viele
companies across the globe have reached
out to us saying that they want to learn
about our approach and participate in our
initiative.

I truly believe that blockchain could
enable a level of transparency in the food
supply chains that has not existed before.
It will allow us to move from a food sys-
tem that has operated with a lot of
anonymity and create an environment of
accountability that enables and scales
trust. For Walmart, the end goal is to
leverage this transparency to create a
safer, smarter, and more sustainable food
system that benefits people and the plan-
et. Letzten Endes, this will benefit our cus-
tomers, whether it helps them make a bet-
ter decision while shopping at our stores
or allows them to scan a QR code on the
package to learn everything they would
like to know about the food they are pur-
chasing—from the farmer or fisherman
through each step it took in the journey
from farm to store.

Potential Impact of the
Innovation

A digital
food system enabled by
blockchain could enable more than just
traceability and safety. It could lay the
groundwork for benefits such as the fol-

Transparency: Transparency is the
food system’s desired state, one in which a
food’s attributes are easily accessible to all
stakeholders, including consumers, Also
that decisions made at every level can be
more informed.

instant access to

Enhanced Food Flow: Blockchain
will enable
groß
amounts of data that was not previously
verfügbar. This means that the best deci-
sions about how food flows from farm to
our stores will be not only possible but
automated.

Reduced Food Waste: One outcome
of using blockchain could be a vast reduc-
tion in food waste. This aligns with
Walmart’s commitment to achieve zero
waste to landfill in key markets by 2025,
and to sell more sustainably produced
products while maintaining the low prices
customers expect.

Deterring Food Fraud: Enhanced
transparency will shine a light on each
actor in the food system, which we believe
will discourage unscrupulous behaviors
and deter food fraud.

New Model for Scaling Trust in
Food: Given recent and well-publicized
food scares and data scandals, some con-
sumers have lost trust in both private and
public institutions and large central
authorities. This trend is not unique to
food and it has broader societal implica-
tionen. Some believe that a new form of
distributed, digital trust that is dependent
on better checks and balances is emerg-
ing. Because blockchain protocols are
based on decentralization and consensus,
it could help food system stakeholders
restore and scale consumer confidence in
food, and in the institutions that are part
of the nation’s food supply.

Und

Walmart

the Foundation
Partners have moved rapidly to scale, test,
and implement blockchain-enabled trace-
ability on a number of strategically select-
ed SKUs. Right now we are on the verge

Innovationen / Volumen 12, number 1/2

Von http heruntergeladen://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/12/1-2/46/705265/inov_a_00266.pdf by guest on 08 September 2023

Frank Yiannas

Forschungsdienst des Kongresses.

Scharf, R.L. (2012) Economic burden of health
losses due to foodborne illnesses in the
United States. Journal of Food Protection.
70. 123 – 131.

of demonstrating complete farm-to-store
traceability for many more.

As our global community becomes
smaller, the business of moving food from
the farm to the dinner table has become
increasingly complex. Food is being dis-
tributed farther than ever before, manche-
times from one distant country to anoth-
er, and foodborne disease outbreaks
could become more widespread. As long
as foodborne outbreaks exist somewhere
in the world, they can exist anywhere in
the world. Today’s food system requires
more interdependence on multiple stake-
holders than ever before. Tatsächlich, collabo-
rative solutions have never been as
important as they are today. No single
food retailer can mandate better food
traceability, food manufacturers in one
country can’t do it alone, nor can any sin-
gle country’s regulatory agencies. Better
food traceability requires collaboration,
and it must be people led and technology
enabled.

While we are starting with food trace-
ability, our ultimate goal is greater food
Transparenz, which will benefit all food
system stakeholders. It will benefit food
producers along the entire food continu-
um. It will benefit regulatory oﬃcials and
NGOs. Aber, ultimately, enhanced food
transparency will benefit our customers.
By getting rid of the anonymity that exists
in the current food system, blockchain
technology will shine a light along every
step of the way in the life of our food
products to help create a safer, smarter,
and more sustainable food system so that
our customers can save money and live
better.