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The food poisoning of colinein and Romaine choline as a plant contamination or public health risk of bacteria in a salad with the elements of the 3D illustration.Getty
"There's nothing the blockchain can do that a database software program can not do," says a harvest scientist based in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Sarah Taber, recalling a conversation with a colleague on the fact if blockchain could be agriculture's holy food safety grail. Taber, a franc critic of technology, says that the industry should look inside to solve food safety problems first. "The problem is not the tool," he says. "It's the people."
This year the food industry has experienced a number of food-borne outbreaks, particularly in Roman lettuce and ground beef. E & nbsp;December 13th, Adam Bros. Farming, a Californian producer named by the FDA as a source of the most recent outbreak in the Romagna region, issued another call, though precautionary, this time of his cauliflower and red and green lettuce.
Last year, the food industry began to consider technology, particularly the blockchain, as a solution to foodborne outbreaks. In particular, Walmart announced that in 2019, all of its own suppliers of green leafy vegetables would be required to join his blockchain to continue providing his stores.
A sign is published on Roman lettuce at a Whole Foods Market in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, Wednesday 28 November 2018. (AP Photo / Matt Rourke)RELEASE
Developed in 2008 as part of the bitcoin cryptocurrency, blockchain works by recording transactions of a consensus of the information systems participating in the data chain. In the food industry, blockchain tends to be "enterprise" or "private", meaning only a select group of participants can upload and access data on the chain.
The Blockchain technology has garnered a lot of buzz for the food industry this year, but Taber, which also hosts a podcast called Farm To Taber on Agriculture and Technology, has become an explicit critic. As far as it is concerned, the blockchain is a non-starter. "If you have a company that does not hire quality people, then no tools you use will work".
Tracing a product like romaine lettuce should take a company like Walmart in a few hours, not days, Taber says. There should only be a handful of brokers to deal with, says Taber, and those brokers should keep good records. If it takes more than a few hours, says Taber, "this tells me that your employees do not use the tools they already have."
Taber says he recently spoke to an avocado distributor who, despite using an old computer system, can quickly find his product internationally within a few hours. "They take avocados from Chile, Mexico and California," he says, "and they wash and package them and then distribute them to local facilities throughout the United States and Canada." Even if they use little more than a "DOS-based software of the years", he says, they can monitor their product in just two hours.
When it takes weeks, not hours, to trace the product, it is impossible to get to the source of an epidemic. That's why it's so difficult for CDC and FDA investigators to find the source of contamination. "When you get to the camp where it happens," says Taber, "everything that's dirty is gone".
File – In this photo of August 17, 2016, a farmer cuts vines in a vineyard in Clarksburg, California (AP Photo / Rich Pedroncelli, File)RELEASE
Taber, who works as an auditor, mainly of fruit and vegetable growers, says that bad record keeping is a symptom of a more insidious problem. "In agriculture," he says, "it's kind of a confused area between bad record keeping and total fraud. "It's impossible to know for sure what's really going on when nobody's watching, he says, and even an auditor can only see him so much.
Taber has also worked for years as an agricultural worker before becoming a crop scientist, and he believes that the real reason why we are witnessing more food-related epidemics these days is due to the increase in repression over immigration. Farm workers, people who actually work in the field, are in the best position to identify a food safety problem and report it. But these days the farmers live in constant fear, even if they still work in the fields.
"You really want to keep your head down and not make a noise," says Taber. "So if you're seeing a problem, you will not say anything." The raids have created a "chilling effect" throughout the agricultural industry, Taber argues, because workers are increasingly terrified to talk about anything, let alone food security, & nbsp; which is a problem far beyond the blockchain.
"It drives me crazy," says Taber, "because they're clearly telling us"'dysfunctional king & # 39; [but] what all'Hearing is "oh, we need better tools".
Blockchain could offer a better way to record and access data, but if workers do not report problems and management is not accurately recording data, it seems that blockchain does not'I have a lot to offer.
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The food poisoning of colinein and Romaine choline as a plant contamination or public health risk of bacteria in a salad with the elements of the 3D illustration.Getty
"There's nothing the blockchain can do that a database software program can not do," says a harvest scientist based in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Sarah Taber, recalling a conversation with a colleague on the fact if blockchain could be agriculture's holy food safety grail. Taber, a franc critic of technology, says that the industry should look inside to solve food safety problems first. "The problem is not the tool," he says. "It's the people."
This year the food industry has experienced a number of food-borne outbreaks, particularly in Roman lettuce and ground beef. And on December 13, Adam Bros. Farming, a Californian producer named by the FDA as a source of the most recent Roma outbreak, issued another call, though precautionary, this time of his cauliflower and red and green lettuce.
Last year, the food industry began to consider technology, particularly the blockchain, as a solution to foodborne outbreaks. In particular, Walmart announced that in 2019, all its suppliers of green leafy vegetables would be required to join its blockchain to continue to supply its stores.
A sign is published on Roman lettuce at a Whole Foods Market in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, Wednesday 28 November 2018. (AP Photo / Matt Rourke)RELEASE
Developed in 2008 as part of the bitcoin cryptocurrency, blockchain works by recording transactions of a consensus of the information systems participating in the data chain. In the food industry, blockchain tends to be "enterprise" or "private", meaning only a select group of participants can upload and access data on the chain.
The Blockchain technology has garnered a lot of buzz for the food industry this year, but Taber, which also hosts a podcast called Farm To Taber on Agriculture and Technology, has become an explicit critic. As far as it is concerned, the blockchain is a non-starter. "If you have a company that does not hire quality people, then no tools you use will work".
Tracing a product like romaine lettuce should take a company like Walmart in a few hours, not days, Taber says. There should only be a handful of brokers to deal with, says Taber, and those brokers should keep good records. If it takes more than a few hours, says Taber, "this tells me that your employees do not use the tools they already have."
Taber says he recently spoke to an avocado distributor who, despite using an old computer system, can quickly find his product internationally within a few hours. "They take avocados from Chile, Mexico and California," he says, "and they wash and package them and then distribute them to local facilities throughout the United States and Canada." Even if they use little more than a "DOS-based software of the years", he says, they can monitor their product in just two hours.
When it takes weeks, not hours, to trace the product, it is impossible to get to the source of an epidemic. That's why it's so difficult for CDC and FDA investigators to find the source of contamination. "When you get to the camp where it happens," says Taber, "everything that's dirty is gone".
File – In this photo of August 17, 2016, a farmer cuts vines in a vineyard in Clarksburg, California (AP Photo / Rich Pedroncelli, File)RELEASE
Taber, who works as an auditor, mainly of fruit and vegetable growers, says that bad record keeping is a symptom of a more insidious problem. "In agriculture," he says, "it's kind of a confused area between bad record keeping and total fraud. "It's impossible to know for sure what's really going on when nobody's watching, he says, and even an auditor can only see him so much.
Taber has also worked for years as an agricultural worker before becoming a crop scientist, and he believes that the real reason why we are witnessing more food-related epidemics these days is due to the increase in repression over immigration. Farm workers, people who actually work in the field, are in the best position to identify a food safety problem and report it. But these days the farmers live in constant fear, even if they still work in the fields.
"You really want to keep your head down and not make a noise," says Taber. "So if you're seeing a problem, you will not say anything." The raids have created a "chilling effect" throughout the agricultural industry, Taber argues, because workers are increasingly terrified to talk about anything, let alone food security, which is a problem that goes far beyond the blockchain.
"It drives me crazy," says Taber, "because they're clearly telling us"'dysfunctional king & # 39; [but] what all'Hearing is "oh, we need better tools".
Blockchain could offer a better way to record and access data, but if workers do not report problems and management is not accurately recording data, it seems that blockchain does not'I have a lot to offer.
