Mavis Hong-Yu Yik, Vivian C. Wong, Tin-Hang Wong, Pang-Chui Shaw
The use of medicinal plants is popular worldwide. Correct herbal authentication is of paramount importance to the safety and best interest of consumers. On the market, there is no comprehensive blockchain-based system to track the processes from plantation to manufacturing and to the sale. With the advancement of information technology, an open and transparent blockchain-based platform, HerBChain, was created to enhance the quality control of herbal products. The implementation of blockchain technology is to minimize the manipulation of recorded information. HerBChain is an information platform for recording the six important processes of herbal product manufacturing and marketing, which include plantation base, TCM processing factory, TCM manufacturer, testing laboratory, distributor and retailer. By duly recording the parameters and data essential for product quality in manufacturing and supply chain, the traceability and reliability of the products can be ensured.
Lanci opskrbe hranom vrlo su složeni, postoje određeni zakoni, standardi kao i centralizirani načini praćenja sljedivosti hrane no to nije dovoljno da bi se izbjegla izbijanja bolesti i pronašli njihovi uzroci. Jedno od mogućih rješenja ovog problema je primjena tehnologije distribuirane glavne knjige koja nam pruža decentraliziranu i sigurnu mrežu, kao i transparentan i trajan način zapisa podataka u glavnu knjigu. Također potrebno je potaknuti sve dionike lanca na digitalizaciju strojeva i primjenu senzora kojima bi prikupljali podatke o uzgoju i skladištenju hrane, a korisnik mora biti u mogućnosti ovakvo rješenje koristiti na jednostavan i brz način. Ovaj rad koristi distribuiranu glavnu knjigu IOTA koja je namijenjena uređajima interneta stvari, a sve podatke zapisuje u strukturu usmjerenog acikličkog grafa zvanog Tangle. Još jedna od značajki IOTA-e je MAM protokol koji dionicima lanca omogućuje zapis podataka u javne, ali i ograničene kanale kojima se ne može pristupiti bez autorizacijskog ključa. Koristeći navedene značajke IOTA-e, u sklopu rada implementirano je rješenje praćenja sljedivosti u lancu koji se sastoji od farmera, proizvođača i prodavača. Svaki od dionika svojim poslužiteljem u Tangle zapisuje podatke vezane uz proizvod, korijeni transakcija zapisuju se u QR kod na proizvodu, a korisnik kod može skenirati razvijenom aplikacijom CQRN i na pregled dobiti sve informacije koje su dionici zapisali u Tangle.
Mika Westerlund, Soham Nene, Seppo Leminen, Mervi Rajahonka
IntroductionIn recent years, various food scandals have damaged consumer trust in the food industry across the world (Sarpong, 2014; Garaus & Treiblmaier, 2021). In 2011, China witnessed a massive pork mislabeling scandal along with food fraud, which led to recalling donkey meat products that included fox meat (Kamath, 2018). In 2013, several meat suppliers in Europe replaced
Marouane El Midaoui, El Mehdi Ben Laoula, Mohammed Qbadou, Khalifa Mansouri
<p class="western" align="justify">Most of supply chain networks have encountered difficulties when trying to integrate all components and stakeholders (Customers, warehouse, transportation, and raw material production. Etc...), which make supply chain management system suffering from a lack of efficiency and transparency that make a steady increase in good’s falsification and consumer’s disappointment. All information about good’s production, storage and transportation should flow clearly during all stages of the supply chain by tracking and authenticating to avoid product’s contamination or fraud in the network. Current tracking IoT-based systems are built on top of centralized architecture and this leaves a gap for tampering and false information especially in urban area, but also the exsiting solutions cannot allow the information to be shared with authority or consumers. To effectively assess and assure traceability and transparency this paper propose an approach using a distributed ledger (blockchain) besides a configuable IoT-based system to take into account all needed data including specific case of urban area, with an opendata platform at the disposal of stockholders, authority and consumers.</p>
Block chains are now firmly established as a digital technology that combines cryptographic, data management, networking, and incentive mechanisms to support the verification, execution, and recording of transactions between parties. While block chain technologies were originally intended to support new forms of digital currency for easier and secure payments, they now hold great promise as a new foundation for all forms of transactions. Agribusiness stands to become a key beneficiary of this technology as a platform to execute 'smart contracts' for transactions, particularly for high-value produce. First it is important to distinguish between private digital currencies and the distributed ledger and block chain technologies that underlie them. The distributed and cross-border nature of digital currencies like Bit coin means that regulation of the core protocols of these systems by central banks is unlikely to be effective. Monetary authorities are focused more on understanding 'on-ramps' and 'off-ramps' that constitute the links to the traditional payments system rather than being able to monitor and regulate the currency itself. In contrast to the digital currency feature of block chain, the distributed ledger feature has the potential for widespread use in agribusiness and trade financing, especially where workflows involve many different parties with no trusted central entity.
The world is facing an unprecedented socio-economic crisis caused by the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19). The virus is also spreading through the import and export food supply chains. The Chinese authorities have discovered the COVID-19 virus in various imported frozen meat packages. Traceability plays a vital role in food quality and food safety. The Internet of Things (IoT) provides solutions to overseeing environmental conditions, product quality, and product traceability. These solutions are traditionally based on a centralized architecture, which does not guarantee tamper-proof data sharing. The blockchain is an emerging technology that provides tamper-proof data sharing in real-time. This article presents a blockchain-enabled supply chain architecture to ensure the availability of a tamper-proof audit trail. This tamper-proof audit trail helps to make sure that all safety measures are undertaken to minimize the risk of COVID-19 and other bacteria, fungi, and parasites being present in the frozen meat supply chain.
Purpose In the disruptive technologies era, the lack of convincing business cases on blockchain (BC) adoption about food supply chain, the existence of uncertainties and barriers to adoption due to knowledge scarcity on characteristics as well as the potentialities and risks involved in it, have triggered the need to investigate the first multinational BC adoption for food supply chain in Europe, to consider how it can guarantee knowledge for the consumption/purchase decision-making and the creation-mechanism of consciousness for sustainable behavioral choice. Design/methodology/approach The authors provide a field exploratory analysis based on customers' perceptions and real knowledge about BC (as a knowledge-constructive tool) in the food and beverage sector. This connected with the need for an informed context, favoring sustainable conscious decision-making related to both the food chain and innovation acceptance. This analysis included the use of innovation acceptance as a corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategic orientation through a survey- and interview-based field analysis (80 respondents). Findings The findings of this study can be considered as antecedents of innovation acceptance in the sector. The analysis assesses consumers' scarce knowledge and perceptions on the BC system, the scarce usage level and the higher acquiring propensity for traceable foodstuffs generating bi-directional/dimensional value, considering that consumption habits could change through security and certainty antecedents and induced knowledge provided by external technological intervention. Originality/value By trying to match innovation and the knowledge-construction need as a vehicle for acceptance, the theoretical contribution would empower the literature on food traceability from the perspective of strategic BC application through a from-knowledge-to-knowledge strategy.
Sina Rafati Niya, Danijel Dordevic, Markus Hurschler, Sarah Grossenbacher · 5 authors
The heterogeneous nature of raw milk production, transportation, processing, transformation, and storage have been triggering concerns on the authenticity of dairy products. For the first time known, this work studied these concerns via interviews with consumers and producers of dairy products. Therefore, this paper introduces “NUTRIA” as a decentralized dairy product Supply Chain Tracing (SCT) system, designed and implemented based on real-world observations of the Swiss dairy supply chain and conducted in collaboration with dairy producers. Based on these studies and to overcome deficits of traditional and centralized SCT approaches, NUTRIA enables an automated SCT via a Blockchain-based decentralized application. NUTRIA materializes a trusted and transparent SCT, which empowers the dairy value chain. Furthermore, results of the real-world evaluations of deployed approaches within NUTRIA are covered, including social aspects and risks.
Mario Felipe Munoz, Kaiwen Zhang, Aamir Shahzad, Mustapha Ouhimmou
When it comes to sustainability, many certification systems live and die by their capacity to track a volume from source to destination. This is because customers (and consequently, auditors) are increasingly concerned with where products are sourced ("Are these local materials?") and what is their environmental impact is ("How much CO2 did this generate?"). The Forest Sustainability Council (FSC) created various frameworks to meet these demands. The FSC is responsible for tracking and labelling all the wood volumes that its members use. Though widely respected, their certifications rely on trusted third parties and extensive record keeping. Thus, they do not efficiently address problems like bribery and "creative" inventory practices.Blockchain technology is an attractive solution because it increases traceability, auditability and access to information. However, blockchain systems have limitations. Notably, they are inefficient for storing large amounts of data. The standard workaround is to use a multiple-database approach where large files are kept off-chain, creating a trade-off between lower transaction fees and lower availability, among other factors.In contrast with these approaches, we propose LogLog: an entirely on-chain system for tracking wood volumes throughout a supply chain and enforcing FSC certification standards. LogLog is ERC-1155 compliant and meets the base requirements for a forestry supply chain.We created two reference implementations of our design using Solidity and deployed them over the Ethereum blockchain. Our evaluation uses realistic parameters and suggests our prototype is a viable alternative to current multiple-database systems in contexts where data integrity is a strict requirement.
Abstract The traditional traceability system for agricultural product transactions is susceptible to information alteration and damage, which may lead to issues regarding product quality and food safety. And blockchain is a technology that boasts tamper-proofing, complete traceability and time-stamped storage. Considering the above, this study proposes a new blockchain-based approach to the quality management of agricultural products and introduces Solidity-based prototype smart contracts for agricultural product transactions. Test results show that the new traceability system can offer good performance in terms of data upload and block response time. The method proposed in this paper can be used as a solution for quality management of agricultural product that boasts whole process transparency, full-link reliability and joint supervision by all nodes in the system.
Ronan D. Mendonça, Otávio Santos Gomes, Luiz F. M. Vieira, Alex Borges Vieira · 6 authors
In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based cold chain technology for vaccine cooling track. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the death of millions of people. An important step towards ending the pandemic is vaccination. Vaccines must be kept under control temperature during the whole process, from fabrication to the hands of the health professionals who will immunize the population. However, there are numerous reports of vaccine loss due to temperature variations, and, currently, people getting vaccinated have no control if their vaccine was kept safe. Blockchain is a technology solution that can provide public and verifiable records. We review the World Health Organization (WHO) cool chain and Blockchain technology. Moreover, we describe current IoT temperature monitoring devices and propose Blockcoldchain to track vaccine cold chain using blockchain, thus proving an unalterable vaccine temperature history. Our experimental results using smart contracts demonstrate the system's feasibility.
The emergence of Blockchain technology as Bitcoin, has completely transformed the process of exchanging financial capital, without an intermediary. The huge success of Bitcoin contributed to the rapid advancement and increase interest of the public in Blockchain technology. As people started digging more into the technology underlying Bitcoin, they started realizing that the blockchain capacity is not just confined to cryptocurrencies. It has the potential to impact a much wider domain of applications to solve many of the issues and challenges in real-world scenarios. One such scenario is product traceability in food supply chain (FSC). Traditional traceability systems are vulnerable to various issues and challenges such as lack of data transparency, confidentiality, centralized data storage, mistrust between the parties, product delay which needs to be addressed. This paper proposes a solution for product traceability in FSCs using Hyperledger Fabric (HLF), a permissioned blockchain framework. We keep a track of food products journey from source to destination. All the information associated with food products shipment recorded securely and immutably in a distributed ledger, which is sync and verified with all the participants in the FSC in real-time but can be accessed by the authorized participants only. For managing access rights to the blockchain network resources, access control rules are defined by embedding them in smart contracts. Moreover, REST API allows clients to interact with blockchain network is secured using, OAuth 2.0 authentication strategy. Finally, we evaluate the performance of the designed blockchain-based system for FSC.
The protection of original achievements including patents and copyrights is a significant and critical issue in today's knowledge-driven economy. In this article, we propose and develop a blockchain service architecture to enhance information traceability and protection effectiveness. Our proposed service architecture is enabled by the core functionalities of blockchain technology including distributed data storage, peer-to-peer transmission, consensus mechanisms, and encryption algorithms. Through this blockchain-based traceability system, we can record, secure, validate, and track original achievements’ registrations and other related transactions. The results of our simulation experiments further validate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed traceability system design. Our experimental analysis shows that the proposed blockchain-based design can effectively enhance original achievements traceability with an embedded automatic incentive rewarding mechanism for both the creation and protection of original achievements. Moreover, our performance analysis and comparative analysis show that the proposed method has more advantages over several other methods. While our study provides an effective solution to address the existing challenges in intellectual property rights and achievements patents protection, the breadth of the blockchain concept and its applications require nuanced investigations in many different contexts. Thus, the proposed blockchain-based traceability system highlights the potential for broader applications of this disruptive technology in many other domains.
Jamilya Nurgazina, Udsanee Pakdeetrakulwong, Thomas Moser, Gerald Reiner
The lack of transparency and traceability in food supply chains (FSCs) is raising concerns among consumers and stakeholders about food information credibility, food quality, and safety. Insufficient records, a lack of digitalization and standardization of processes, and information exchange are some of the most critical challenges, which can be tackled with disruptive technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs). Studies provide evidence that novel technological and sustainable practices in FSCs are necessary. This paper aims to describe current practical applications of DLTs and IoT in FSCs, investigating the challenges of implementation, and potentials for future research directions, thus contributing to achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Within a systematic literature review, the content of 69 academic publications was analyzed, describing aspects of implementation and measures to address the challenges of scalability, security, and privacy of DLT, and IoT solutions. The challenges of high costs, standardization, regulation, interoperability, and energy consumption of DLT solutions were also classified as highly relevant, but were not widely addressed in literature. The application of DLTs in FSCs can potentially contribute to 6 strategic SDGs, providing synergies and possibilities for more sustainable, traceable, and transparent FSCs.
Blockchain has been described as a breakthrough Information and Communication Technology having the potential to ensure safe, immutable and transparent information exchange between actors. This study attempts to foresee whether Blockchain will play an important role in traceability management and how this innovation is expected to change the agri-food sector's future, using a Delphi group discussion with experts. According to our results, blockchain is potentially recognised as a decentralised system able not only to harmonise safety and quality standards but also to reduce bureaucracy. Greater efficiency and reliability of the system would lead to the establishment and coordination of new supply chain relationships.
Mohamed M. Ahmed, Chantal Taconet, Mohamed Ould, Sophie Chabridon · 5 authors
involves many stakeholders. From the traceability data, contractual decisions may be taken such as incident detection, validation of the delivery or billing. The stakeholders require transparency in the whole process. The combination of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the blockchain paradigms helps in the development of automated and trusted systems. In this context, ensuring the quality of the IoT data is an absolute requirement for the adoption of those technologies. In this article, we propose an approach to assess the data quality (DQ) of IoT data sources using a logistic traceability smart contract developed on top of a blockchain. We select the quality dimensions relevant to our context, namely accuracy, completeness, consistency and currentness, with a proposition of their corresponding measurement methods. We also propose a data quality model specific to the logistic chain domain and a distributed traceability architecture. The evaluation of the proposal shows the capacity of the proposed method to assess the IoT data quality and ensure the user agreement on the data qualification rules. The proposed solution opens new opportunities in the development of automated logistic traceability systems.
Somdip Dey, Suman Saha, Amit Kumar Singh, Klaus D. McDonald-Maier
Food safety is an important issue in today’s world. The traditional agri-food production system does not offer easy traceability of the produce at any point of the supply chain, and hence, during a food-borne outbreak, it is very difficult to sift through food production data to track produce and the origin of the outbreak. In recent years, the blockchain based food production system has resolved this challenge; however, none of the proposed methodologies makes the food production data easily accessible, traceable and verifiable by consumers or producers using mobile/edge devices. In this paper, we propose FoodSQRBlock (Food Safety Quick Response Block), a blockchain technology based framework that digitises the food production information and makes it easily accessible, traceable and verifiable by the consumers and producers by using QR codes. We also propose a large-scale integration of FoodSQRBlock in the cloud to show the feasibility and scalability of the framework, as well as give an experimental evaluation to prove this.