A recent Wall Street Journal article reported that "after initial tests, 12 of the world's biggest companies, including Walmart and Nestle, are building a blockchain to remake how the industry tracks food worldwide." I reached out to IBM to learn more. The traceability platform the article is referencing was based on technology provided by IBM. IBM has been one of the most active blockchain innovators. The group that is focused on solving the traceability problem is known as "IBM Food Trust." IBM Food Trust's main mission is to improve traceability.
There are safety implications. In early spring this year, romaine lettuce contaminated with E. coli bacteria got onto store shelves. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that 210 people were infected with the outbreak strain across 36 states. 96 people were hospitalized, including 27 people who developed a type of kidney failure called hemolytic uremic syndrome. Five deaths were reported. It was not until June 28, over two months later, that the CDC reported that "this outbreak appears to be over." The CDC estimates that foodborne illnesses affect 47.8 million people in the U.S. every year, putting 127,000 into the hospital and killing more than 3,000.
Why does tracing back product to the site of the problem take so long? The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) requires companies in the food supply chain to provide "one back, one up" traceability. "One back" refers to where the food came from, and "one up" refers to who it was sold to. In short, when a food poisoning incident occurs, the problem can't be solved quickly because this is a serial, one step at a time, process. The problem is made worse by the fact that many participants may have to go into paper records to figure out the information that needs to be provided.
Retailers want to keep their customers safe. But they have other motivations as well. In a YouTube video, Frank Yiannas, Vice President of Food Safety at Walmart, told of a day he brought a pack of mangoes into a staff meeting, put it on the table, and said, "Your traceback exercise starts right now." The food safety group then timed how long it took to get each piece of information back from the store, to distributors, to processers, and finally to farmers. Red-faced and laughing he said, "I'm not going to give you the results." But it was clearly too slow.
"When there is a food event," Mr. Yiannas said, "you want to be fast, but you want to be right. That food product is guilty until proven innocent. We at Walmart will pull all the product until we know what the implicated product is and can put the safe product back out." The existing traceability process is costly and leads to considerable food waste.
As previously mentioned, one of the leaders in the IBM Food Trust consortium is Walmart. Kroger, another leading retailer, is also part of the group. Leading food companies, in addition to Unilever, include Tyson Foods, Dole Food, Driscoll's, Golden State Foods, McCormick and Company, and McLane Company.
What is blockchain and how does it help? Blockchain is a distributed database that holds records of digital data or events in a way that makes them tamper-resistant. While participants in a blockchain may access, inspect, or add to the data, they cannot alter or delete existing data. The original information stays put, leaving a permanent and public information trail of transactions. It provides a single version of the truth about transactions and activities occurring across complex supply chain ecosystems. Traceability is potentially a great application for this technology.
I talked to IBM's Suzanne Livingston, Offering Director, IBM Food Trust and Ramesh Gopinath, VP Blockchain Solutions, to get more details on the IBM Food Trust solution and its status. Ms. Livingston said, "We have been in production for close to a year." The Food Trust has recorded over half a million transactions in total so far.
