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The recent recall of Roman lettuce due to E. coli has been in effect throughout Canada and the United States since November 26, but the problem started a long time ago, probably at a California production center or farm where the food was contaminated.
In Ontario, a technology company is working on a way to help prevent these types of outbreaks using blockchain technology.
Adastra Corp., an information management company that helps organizations build technology solutions, is working with a local provincial producer to apply blockchain to track its products throughout the food production process.
Marcos Da Silva, director of products and analysis strategy of Adastra, argues that by applying the blockchain to this type of food supply chain, the mass appeal of Roman lettuce could have been prevented and that the E. coli epidemic it could have been discovered long before it reached the shelves of supermarkets or consumer homes.
"What's missing in a traditional [food supply chain] the database is trust, "said Da Silva ITBusiness.ca.
He says that the application of blockchain technology to the food supply chain would ensure that food on consumer tables is safe.
Blockchain and food traceability
Blockchain is based on the idea that it is a digital ledger that traces every information on a product from the beginning to the end. There are two types of blockchain, public and private (the latter of which offers greater security and control for businesses). Companies like Adastra are looking for ways to apply private blockchains to issues like food traceability.
For example, when a seed is planted that would be recorded on the ledger, and then in every subsequent point of its evolution from harvesting, to transportation and production to the dinner table, that seed or piece of product is tracked and recorded on blockchain .
The idea is a unique source of truth that knows everything that happened to that particular piece of production and every single place it was.
In this way, food producers could improve food traceability, identifying exactly when and where contamination occurs. And instead of having to implement a total recall of an entire article, they would be able to tell exactly which product was contaminated and quarantine the small group of products that might have come into contact.
The idea, said Da Silva, is to finally inform customers in particular if the products purchased have been contaminated, rather than making a mass appeal and creating panic across the country.
The traceability of food is where the blockchain really makes sense, Da Silva said ITBusiness.ca.
"There is no single entity that can control the end-to-end process of bringing food to the table," he said. "You can not check the information on how a piece of lettuce was changed, modified or contaminated during the process. simply trust that the information is correct and valid. "
However, not everyone agrees that the blockchain in the revolutionary solution for food traceability problems.
Dr. Lawrence Goodridge, an associate professor of food safety at McGill University, said ITBusiness.ca he is a little skeptical about all the clamor surrounding the "blockchain revolution".
"Blockchain gets all the attention, but there are many other traceability approaches," he says, "blockchain should not be synonymous with traceability."
Explain that blockchain is just an approach to solving problems related to food safety and traceability. "One of the blockchain's main strengths is the idea of moving from paper records to digital records, but we do not need blockchain to do that." He claims that a simple spreadsheet could, in fact, be the answer.
Walmart faces the blockchain
The idea of applying blockchain to improve food traceability is not necessarily new, in fact, IBM Corp. and Walmart Inc. are currently working to build a global food supply chain using digital ledger technology.
According to a video explaining Walmart's blockchain project, Walmart's vice president of food safety Frank Yiannas said that the reason the company started the project was due to the increase in the number of food-related outbreaks in United States last year, including a 'onset of lettuce that led to a death.
He is working on two blockchain pilots, one in the United States and one in China. Walmart announced one of those mango-focused pilots last year and was able to successfully use the blockchain to track the product.
Yiannas said that he asked his team to trace a mango packet to their source using the traditional supply chain and that apparently took six days, 18 hours and 26 minutes. So doing the same exercise using IBM's blockchain technology took only 2.2 seconds to track.
Now Walmart is specifically trying to track down lettuce to deal with epidemics and ensure food security. According to a September blog post, he says that "suppliers should have all these systems in place by next year".
Goodridge claims that if the Walmart program is successful it does not mean that blockchain will work for the rest of the industry.
He says that for blockchain to truly be the only source of truth, it must be adopted at the sector level. However, making this happen is one of the biggest challenges in implementing technology.
Walmart could be successful, but only because it is a large multinational organization that has power and control to influence its suppliers and force them to adopt the technology. Sector-level adoption with smaller players is much harder emphasized by Goodridge.
Could the solution be small?
Back in Ontario, Da Silva says that Adastra is working with a medium-sized grower to apply technology only to his business and product line.
However, the project with the grower did not actually start with the goal of improving food traceability. Da Silva says that the farmer has contacted Adastra in search of help to understand the products that is growing at a granular level and was the information management company that suggested using this data and applying blockchain for food traceability.
Adastra, based in Toronto, actually offers a range of big data services, cloud services and IoT and started working in blockchain about a year ago, but Da Silva claims to have quickly identified the food industry as an area promising for technology.
Although the project with the local grower is not specifically about lettuce, Da Silva says he calls it "one day in the life of lettuce" to help him easily explain it to his friends and family.
The project focuses on the use of data collected on each individual food and on monitoring it while going from one farm to another. Da Silva says that working with a local farmer is very important because, in general, consumers believe that local products are safe and organic, and two, it is easier to trace minute details such as the exact type of fertilizer used, from which farm comes the object, etc.
The challenges of the blockchain
The project is still in its early stages, however, and there are challenges for the application of blockchain to live products.
For example, Adastra is still working on a way to properly label live products with some sort of barcode or sticker that would not fall out during production. Now, although this is not necessarily a problem with the blockchain technology itself, the digital projection would not be possible if the stickers fall or the food can not be traced correctly and consistently at every stage.
Goodridge emphasizes that this is a challenge not only for Adastra, but for the food industry as a whole. It also adds that the tracking of fresh products that are cut for example and added to a salad, or the food that has many fresh ingredients all mixed together, it would be almost impossible to trace on blockchain.
Da Silva also noted that there was a rejection of the industry with the Adastra project. Issues related to supply agreements and retail systems that are not ready to tackle blockchain technology have delayed the launch of the project.
"People say that blockchain is the revolution and the solution for traceability of food, I'm more cautious," says Goodridge.
"There is no doubt [the industry] it needs better traceability and blockchain if it is implemented correctly and can overcome its challenges, then it will be useful ", he admits," but there are groups that dominate technology and feel it infallible. I do not think that's the case. "
While blockchain as mainstream technology still has a way to go, Walmart and IBM have said they plan to fully launch their lettuce blockchain project in the fall of next year, and Da Silva says it hopes the Adastra project with the Ontario producer will be in production in the first half of 2019.
