Test of blockchain traces of ingredients for Nestlé's children

Dive Brief:

• Nestlé traced some of her Gerber products using the Food Trust, a blockchain system developed by IBM, in a test of the ability of technology to trace the source of fruit and vegetables ranging
• The process involves nine other food companies – Dole Food, Driscoll, Golden State Foods, Kroger, McCormick, McLane, Tyson Foods, Unilever and Walmart – to determine how effective the blockchain traceability of food is global scale.
• During the test, Nestlé traced the ingredients for the sweet porridge of mashed potatoes, apples and pumpkin to determine if the technology could make the product faster. The tests involved more ingredients and cross-border shipments.

Dive Insight:

Companies using a blockchain solution, such as Food Trust, store harvest, processing, packaging and shipping data, which can be traced in seconds to days or even weeks using traditional methods of data storage and retrieval. Food Trust performed a traceback test with a speed of 2.2 seconds, compared to seven days before the blockchain, reports FreightWaves.

To make blockchain information more useful, suppliers and competitors will need to collaborate on a shared registration system that could speed up investigations on recalls of bad foods.

The recent Roman lettuce recalls that the FDA needs to quickly and accurately trace the source of food, the Journal reports.

Food Trust conducted previous tests, including a single-component pumpkin squash tracking for Nestlé and mango logistics for Walmart, with the aim of achieving complete visibility of the transition from farm to grocery to the food supply chain .

Nestlé found one of the challenges in adopting the Blockchain Food Trust was the need to develop interfaces that link shipping, trucking, processing and other software systems needed to manage the ingredients. The team had to incorporate data from farms, processing plants and logistics operations, and the company's ERP software, including paper and electronic data in various formats with multiple data sets for each ingredient.