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Screenshot of the Patagonian blockchain
Image: provided
WWF-Australia and BCG Digital Ventures have partnered to launch a new blockchain-based platform to track the environmental and ethical impact of food and products.
Launching the OpenSC platform in Sydney on Thursday, organizations said they hope to help people and businesses avoid illegal, environmentally harmful or immoral products.
"Through OpenSC, businesses and consumers will have a new level of transparency about whether the food we eat contributes to environmental degradation or social injustice such as slavery," said Dermot O & Gorman, WWF CEO. Australia.
OpenSC works by scanning the QR codes of the products. Once a QR code has been scanned, the user is shown information about where a particular product comes from, when and how it was produced and how it traveled along the supply chain.
To track products, however, a digital tag, like an RFID tag, must be linked to the original production point; this also means inserting a tag into the meat of the animal. They must also be connected to a blockchain.
The blockchain then records the movement of the product and can also store additional information, such as the temperature of food in the warehouse, explained WWF-Australia.
Read also: blockchain will be mainstream by 2025?
In an attempt to show how the platform hopes to reduce the environmental impact, OpenSC was launched in the Aria restaurant in Sydney by Australian chef Matt Moran, who cooked one of the first products to trace using the platform: the Patagonian fish are captured in Antarctic waters of Austral Fisheries and sent to thirteen countries worldwide.
Defining OpenSC as a "passion project", Moran said it is important for chefs to know the origins of the products they are cooking.
Austral hopes the platform will stimulate appreciation of the origin of food through education.
"We have developed a technology that can reliably identify the exact location in which each austral fish was captured and then use machine learning to demonstrate that it has been legally captured in an MSC-certified sustainable fishery and in particular that the fish has not been caught within a marine protected area or in an environmentally sensitive area, "said the director of BCGDV and co-chairman of the Council of the World Economic Forum on the future of consumption, Paul Hunyor.
"We have designed this technology to be highly compatible with both existing supply chain operations and certification systems, but also to interface with other blockchain-enabled providence solutions."
The platform was piloted by the WWF and its partners, using the blockchain to track down the tuna caught in the Pacific.
