Blockchain is a digital “ledger” that records financial transactions that are publicly-accessible but also secure. Some are calling it the most tamper-proof information storage system ever created and it is now being looked at by a variety of industries, including agrifood in its potential uses for food traceability.
“It’s already in use primarily by financial services companies, but there has been increased focus and the agri-sector of late. “Our clients have actually been contacting us with queries about blockchain,” says Lory Kehoe, Deloitte EMEA blockchain lab lead. “It’s always a good sign when they come to us with ideas, and not the other way around. You know it’s at the top of their minds.”
Specifically blockchain could be very effective in the area of traceability. “What does blockchain do? Effectively it provides a single source of truth for all the different participants using a digital ledger to see,” says Kehoe. “So if a a calf is born in a field in Waterford, a part of its ear is clipped off, and sent to a lab where its DNA data could be effectively recorded on an immutable database. As that piece of meat moves from the abattoir through various other stages of production, until finally landing on someone’s dinner plate in Beijing, there could be a small QR code on the menu beside the product, which a consumer can scan and access the full record of where the meat originated from.”
This would not only benefit the food-savvy consumer but restaurants would also be in a position to charge premium prices for different meats based on the evidence provided by blockchain tech.
Of course, when any system is digitized, there is always the threat of cyber hacking. There have been reports of digital wallets – comprised of bitcoin – being hacked on blockchain. But it’s important to distinguish the difference between the two. Bitcoin is an application of blockchain. In other words, the use of the ledger as a digital currency application was breached, but the underlying platform, ie blockchain, has not.
Kehoe believes blockchain has thus far proven to be far too sophisticated a system to be compromised. “Of course security is an area that comes up a lot but data is far more secure on a digital ledger than it is on a traditional single database,” he says. “The blockchain is a shared digital ledger, and every single participant in the chain – in this case, from farm to fork – has the exact same replica of that dataset, so if any one person tries to change it, everyone else is immediately notified.”
--