REVIEW ON BLOCKCHAIN AND TRACEABILITY

REVIEW ON BLOCKCHAIN AND TRACEABILITY: A REVOLUTIONARY APPROACH TO THE GLOBAL FOOD TRADE

With the rising concern over food safety, traceability of the food product and food production system has emerged as a necessity. In the present era of continuous growth in global food business, success of an enterprise is highly dependent on competitive strategies adopted. It can be the strategy of following current economic trends, improving competitive positions in the market or may be adaptation of technological advancement.

While going truly global with supply chain management, a company may develop product in the USA, produce in India and sale in Europe In this scenario, the traditional operation management & logistical activities are facing radical changes. This change in trade and the modernization of transport infrastructures have elevated the importance of work/ process/ product flow management to new levels.

Manufacturers and researchers have noticed many problems in relation to complexity of supply chain activities. It is difficult to identify the problem zone in a long supply chain which includes a large number of stakeholders. Therefore quality and safety of food has got compromised to an extensive level in many occasions. As a result a number of food crises, food borne disease outbreaks, and food recall and food safety issues occurred during the last couple of decades and the credibility of the food industry was heavily challenged.

These necessitate stringent laws, policies and standards regarding food safety and quality management. The strict regulation of food safety has been developed for the food industry and traceability was found as a tool to meet the food safety and quality requirements.

Traceability is in one hand providing ease in doing business on the other hand providing measure to trace down the operation. Tracing a product from the origin to final user is of utter importance and it is of more concern when it is a food product. With the rising concern of gaining customers’ faith on food, tracing a food from production of raw materials to finally in the dining table and proving customer proper information about a food’s life cycle has become customary and necessary.

This change in mindset made information a new form of business capital. Business houses are, thereby, investing a large chunk of their capital in developing a robust traceability system for their business. But a few implementation hurdles has been found for implementation of traceability system as the success lies on accurate collection, documentation, maintenance and application of information. The manufacturers found this documentation part truly complex as it needs proper maintenance of database.

Moreover they found the system very slow during investigation of food related crisis. Even the modernization of traditional traceability system by introducing Global Food Traceability, which was a concept of centralized information system, didn’t help much as it was a monopolistic information system, which may raise trust problem. Thus the concept of using blockchain technology in traceability is rising.

Blockchain is a digital platform that keeps the whole history of all transactions between users across the network in a tamper- and revision-roof manner. This removes need of a central authority and consequently leads to confidence of participants in the integrity of any single entity and hence, enhanced transparency and trust. It helps transparency and easy monitoring of the goods flow in the chain, quickly finding the source when dealing with contaminated food, thereby help to produce safe food (Bertolini et al., 2006; Beulens et al., 2005; Regattieri et al., 2007; Trienekens & Zuurbier, 2008).

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