We rarely think about it, but the modern food system is a marvel. We have access to fresh produce all year round, buy exotic food from all around the world, and have more variety than our ancestors could ever dream of.
Our food is generally safe to eat. Still, occasionally it can make us sick. Last year in 2018 there were at least 18 reported outbreaks of foodborne illnesses in the USA, including the E. coli found in romaine lettuce.
“People talk about the food supply chain,” says Frank Yiannas, former Vice President of Food Safety at Walmart. “But it is not actually a chain, it’s a complex network.” When an outbreak of a food-borne disease does happen, it can take days, if not weeks, to find its source. If investigators cannot point to a specific farm or farms, the government usually advises consumers to avoid products grown in a certain area (as happened with romaine lettuce from Yuma, Arizona), or even to avoid the type of product altogether. According to Walmart, millions of bags or heads of lettuce had to be removed, and consumers lost confidence in romaine lettuce altogether. Better traceability could help save lives by allowing companies to act faster and protect the livelihoods of farmers by only discarding produce from the affected farms.
For this reason, Walmart has always been interested in enhancing transparency and traceability in the food system. Mr. Yiannas explains that the company has tried many systems and approaches to solving this problem over the years; none had brought them the kind of results they were after. When Yiannas first heard about blockchain and the idea of using it to trace food in the supply chain, he was skeptical.