We usually don’t think much about our safety when consuming food. It is because today’s food system is quite modernized. It gives us access to fresh produce all year round. We can buy exotic foods from around the globe. We have a wide range of food variety available than our ancestors could have had.
Modern Food System | Challenges
Occasionally, the same food system can make us sick. In the year 2018, more than 18 outbreaks of foodborne illness were reported in the USA, including the E. coli outbreak in romaine lettuce. People talk about strengthening the food supply chain, but it is not a chain, it is a complex network. So, when there is an outbreak caused by a food-borne disease, it can take days, if not weeks, to finds its source. If investigators fail to point to a specific farm or farms, the government adopts the usual practice of advising people to avoid using products grown in that specific area. It even advises avoiding the type of product. Due to this, Walmart removed millions of bags of lettuce, while consumers stopped trusting romaine lettuce altogether.
Better traceability and transparency could have saved Walmart to act fast and safeguard the livelihood of farmers. It could have that by only discarding ledgproduce from the affected farms.
Finding Solutions with Blockchain
Walmart and other key food players have always been interested in enhancing traceability and transparency in the food system. After many trials and errors, now they are relying on blockchain to make traceable food supply chain.
Food Supply Chain Traceability and Transparency with Blockchain Platforms like Hyperledger Fabric
Creating a (traceability) system for the entire food supply ecosystem is always a challenge. At Oodles, we think that blockchain technology is a good fit to address this problem with the Hyperledger development services. Blockchain enables trust, immutability, and transparency in the business ecosystem. In the past, many companies have tried to create a traceability system, but they never scaled because they were centralized databases. Blockchain is a decentralized, shared ledger that can enhance the legacy food system. Given the blockchain’s potential in business, Walmart decided to develop two proof of concept (POC) projects.
In its cloud service Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon also offers the option of operating its own blockchain with its own dApps and smart contracts in the cloud. "
Amazon Managed Blockchain " is a fully managed service, similar to Microsoft Azure Blockchain Services.
The client uses standard Ethereum JSON RPC API methods to query and submit transactions to the nodes participating in the Ethereum network.Control resources, create blockchain, analyze dataWhen selecting the appropriate blockchain technology, the equipment and resources of the nodes used can of course be configured.
The resources available depend on the subscription (starter or standard) booked.
The focus of Amazon Managend Blockchain is of course on creating smart contracts .When booking resources in AWS, for example in this case with Amazon Managed Blockchain, the data of these resources can be used within AWS.
Existing members of the consortium can use this to vote on whether a new member may be admitted.
