N. Nasurudeen Ahamed, T. K. Thivakaran, P. Karthikeyan
Blockchain is booming technology in many industries. Especially, supply chain management. This paper talks about how the perishable food product to take safely in cold supply chain management with the help of blockchain technology. Here, we proposed the immutable ledger from farm to consumer. This ledger is distributed. So, whoever (farm to consumer) can take this data and check the details. With the help of an immutable ledger, no one can change the food item data. Example: what temperature we assigned to the perishable products and which company manufacture the food products and date, etc., all data stored forever. No one can be changed the data. So, with this technology, we can reduce the food losses, reduce the economic losses for a manufacturing company, and avoid the foodborne illness of our valuable consumer. Eventually, we increase consumer trust.
In the last decades, numerous food scandals have attracted policy makers' interest and subsequently induced retailers to actively improve food safety. Blockchain technology allows consumers to track the flow of food products and reduce food fraud, such as counterfeiting, dilution, or adulteration. Using three experiments conducted with Austrian business students as well as an online convenience sample, we investigate how the traceability of food products impacts consumers' trust in the retailer and subsequently influences consumers' retailer choice. Our model further considers retailer familiarity and the disclosure of blockchain benefits as important moderators of the impact of blockchain-based traceability systems on trust in the retailer. The model was tested using ANOVA, ANCOVA, and Hayes’ PROCESS models. In terms of fostering consumer trust, the findings show that retailers who are unfamiliar to consumers profit more from the use of blockchain technology than do better-known retailers. Moreover, informing consumers about specific blockchain benefits strengthens the positive effects of a blockchain-based traceability system.
Open access
Food Supply Chain Traceability
Food Waste Reduction and Sustainability
Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification
Controlling the product quality in food industry throughout its supply chain is today one of the most challenges in the world especially when it comes to typical food products. In recent years, various companies are trying to experiment with joint use of Blockchain and Radio Frequency Identification technologies to solve problems in scenarios where numerous untrusted actors get involved. Blockchain is gaining increasing popularity as a technology to enable product traceability in a certified and immutable way from the farm to the fork of food products and to avoid fraud and counterfeiting by guaranteeing trusted, transparent and shared information in the agri-food supply-chain. By combining smart contracts, Interplanetary File System and Internet of Things technologies, this paper tries to address these issues and presents a proposal of an implementation model for the supply chain management of a typical Italian food product - Carasau bread. The main goal of the model proposal is to guarantee and certify a transparent, secure and auditable traceability in such a way each actor of the supply chain can verify the quality of the product.
Abstract This study puts forward a novel frozen aquatic product traceability system (BIOT‐TS) that based on blockchain and Internet of things (IoT) technology, which can alleviate the drawbacks of current tracing management during cold chain logistic, such as the weak security performance, inefficient centralized data management as well as the easy‐tampered traceability information. The proposed system possesses the advantages of decentralization, safety, reliability, and tamper‐proofing when it compares with traditional tracking technology. It is particularly suitable for multi‐stages tracking management of cold chain logistics from aquaculture, production, logistics, and circulation to sales. In terms of such blockchain‐IoT‐based technology, the system is deployed and evaluated with the case of frozen turbot ( Scophthalmus maximus ) that is circulated and sold under the background of e‐commerce cold chain logistics. It can significantly improve the quality and safety of the frozen aquatic product by using smart contracts, consensus strategy, and data on‐chain verification technology. The overall involved participants can share more reliable tracing information after adopting this tracing system. Furthermore, the performance of this hybrid tracing technology has been evaluated by the operations of on‐chain process and tracing queries through the real experiments, and has testified to be effective. Therefore, the application of this system is beneficial for the improvement of the aquatic food logistics industry and ensures credit in its ecosystem. Practical Applications The blockchain‐IoT‐based frozen aquatic product traceability management is one of the most promising technologies that possess the advantages of tamper‐proof, transparent, and irrefutable transactions combined with distributed monitoring and tracking functionalities. Through the decentralized data management, smart contract, and mechanism of consensus, the traceability information is partitioned and encrypted storage, which can be used for government supervision and consumers' retroactive queries. This novel frozen aquatic food product tracing technology can fundamentally improve the reliability of quality tracing applications and make the closely related tracing management more transparent, secure, and efficient.
Securing the traceability of products in a supply chain is an urgent issue. Recently, supply-chain systems that use a blockchain have been proposed. In these systems, the blockchain is used as a common database shared among supply chain parties to secure the integrity and reliability of distribution information such as ownership transfer records. These systems thus secure a high level of traceability in the supply chain. Considering future scalability of supply chains, public permissionless blockchain (PPBC) is a promising approach. In this approach, however, distribution information that should be kept private is made public since the information recorded in PPBC can be read by anyone. We therefore propose a method for preserving privacy while securing traceability in a supply chain system using PPBC. The proposed method preserves privacy by concealing distribution information via encryption. In addition, the proposed method ensures distribution among legitimate supply chain parties while concealing their blockchain addresses by using zero-knowledge proofs.We implement the proposed method on Ethereum smart contracts and verify the system behavior. The results show that the proposed method works as expected, and that system usage cost per distribution party is at most 2.2 × 106 gas units in terms of blockchain transaction fees.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the debate on blockchain (BC) adoption for preventing counterfeiting by investigating BC systems where different options for BC feeding and reading complement the use of BC technology. By grounding on the situational crime prevention, this study analyses how BC systems can be designed to effectively prevent counterfeiting. Design/methodology/approach This is a multiple-case study of five Italian wine companies using BC to prevent counterfeiting. Findings This study finds that the desired level of upstream/downstream counterfeiting protection that a brand owner intends to guarantee to customers through BC is the key driver to consider in the design of BC systems. The study identifies which variables are relevant to the design of feeding and reading processes and explains how such variables can be modulated in accordance with the desired level of counterfeiting protection. Research limitations/implications The cases investigated are Italian companies within the wine sector, and the BC projects analysed are in the pilot phase. Practical implications The study provides practical suggestions to address the design of BC systems by identifying a set of key variables and explaining how to properly modulate them to face upstream/downstream counterfeiting. Originality/value This research applies a new perspective based on the situational crime prevention approach in studying how companies can design BC systems to effectively prevent counterfeiting. It explains how feeding and reading process options can be configured in BC systems to assure different degrees of counterfeiting protection.
This research summarizes the implementation of blockchain technology in the food and agriculture industry in Canada. Our research indicates that blockchain solutions are an existing and proven set of technologies. We also describe how blockchain based supply chain traceability information has many more benefits than its current use for food safety and product recalls. We recommend that costs for development of blockchain based solutions should also be distributed across stakeholders, and apportioned by the relevant industry associations. Our research indicates that adoption of blockchain technology in agriculture will achieve critical mass earlier when the industry applies a consortium approach, in a regulatory environment that is supported by government. This report also makes recommendations relevant to the integration of blockchain for end consumers of food.
The technology Block-chain is most emerging and widely used in almost all the applications like supply chain management systems, healthcare, banking industries, business, IT sectors, government organizations, agriculture etc. The food products are more sensitive, and it is very hard to trace the origin, buyers, sellers, farmers with the existing centralized method. The usage of Block-chain technology is proposed and experimented in this work along with the features of decentralization, increased security, immutability, and tamper proof for supply chains. The proposed work uses the smart contract on Ethereum for food supply chain management systems, which avoids falsifying information, corrupting database, external attacks. The analysis of food supply chains is shown in the experimental results.
Establishing a blockchain food traceability system (BFTS) is increasingly important and urgent to resolve the contradiction between consumers' intention regarding safe food selections and the spread of polluted foods. Using the advantages of blockchain, such as immutability, decentralization, openness, and anonymity, we can build trusted food traceability systems based on these important characteristics. With reliable information, traceability from production to sales can effectively improve food safety. In this research, multiple models, namely, the information success model (ISS) and the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) are formed into a conceptual integrated framework to study the intentions' influenced factors of BFTS technology for Chinese consumers to help ensure food safety and the quality of Chinese organic food products. A face-to-face questionnaire survey with 300 valid responses was analyzed by Partial Least Square from the Chinese consumers focusing on the organic food products. This study found that the attitude and perceived behavioral control qualities significantly and positively affect the usage intention in adopting BFTS, while the subjective norms are positively but not significantly correlation with the usage intention in using BFTS. The above results will inform suggestions for productors and academics along with implications to promote BFTS' usage intention.
Traceability has emerged as a prime requirement for a multi-tier and multi-site production. It enables visibility and caters to the consumer requirements of transparency and quality assurance. Textile and clothing industry is one such example that requires traceability implementation to address prevailing problems of information asymmetry and low visibility. Customers find it difficult to access product data that can facilitate ethical buying practices or assure product authenticity. Besides, it is challenging for stakeholders to share crucial information in an insecure environment with risk of data manipulations and fear of losing information advantage. In this context, this study investigates and proposes a blockchain-based traceability framework for traceability in multi-tier textile and clothing supply chain. It conceptualizes the interaction of supply chain partners, and related network architecture at the organizational level and smart contract and transaction validation rules at the operational level. To illustrate the application of the proposed framework, the study presents an example of organic cotton supply chain using blockchain with customized smart contract and transaction rules. It finally demonstrates the applicability of the developed blockchain by testing it under two parameters. The proposed system can build a technology-based trust among the supply chain partners, where the distributed ledger can be used to store and authenticate supply chain transactions. Further, the blockchain-based traceability system would provide a unique opportunity, flexibility, and authority to all partners to trace-back their supply network and create transparent and sustainable supply chain.
Abstract Applications of blockchain in the food sector are growing and the adoption of farm‐to‐fork traceability systems is at the forefront. We review applications of blockchain across different dimensions while focusing on how broad adoption of the technology might help address major challenges faced by the U.S. fresh produce industry. These challenges include food safety, food fraud, food loss and waste, and the general need for better traceability systems. We discuss whether blockchain technologies might play a role in enhancing the resilience of the produce supply chain and highlight limitations and challenges of the technology stakeholders might consider going forward. JEL CLASSIFICATION L86; O32; Q13
With the advancement in technology, the quality of human life has ushered in an unprecedented improvement, and people are paying more and more attention to food safety issues. In Taiwan, the whole country was in an uproar when several food security scandals broke out in 2011. Since then, people have increased distrust of the resume, the certificates, and the testing reports of the food, as well as the government's functionality of supervising food safety. Therefore, constructing a reliable food traceability system under the distrust becomes the main purpose of this paper, and the characteristics of blockchain technology are happen to be able to eliminate the dependence on the trust of these centralized third-party. In this thesis, we target on two aspects of food traceability: the environment in which the ingredients of the food are sourced, and the logistics and shipping environment through which the food supply chain passes. The source environment of the ingredients part is based on the accurate environmental data collected by the IoT sensors deployed at the farm, as well as the various certificates or testing report of the farms. As for the logistics shipping environment, is also based on the data collected by the IoT sensor deployed in the vehicle. Supported by blockchain technology, with its characteristics, it provides verification for these data under the distrust of both parties. At last, our system supports e-commerce service. We provide a shopping platform for customers to purchase these source-proven foods, and the traceability of the trustworthy resume of the food as well.
Ralph Kwadwo Osei, Marco Medici, Martin Hingley, Maurizio Canavari
<abstract> This study investigates the attitudes and perceptions of businesses and consumers towards the application of Blockchain technology (BCT) to fresh produce supply chains. Semi-structured interviews and focus groups (FG) were performed with fresh produce company managers and consumers, respectively. The fresh produce sector, in this context, concerns the fresh and chill chain, value-added vegetables, fruits and salads and the ingredients of these used in further food value-added processes and products. A total of five themes were identified as factors influencing BCT adoption: the novelty of the technology, supply chain characteristics, open data issues, cost-benefit analysis, and role of public stakeholders. From these, twelve sub-themes were developed and discussed. Findings provide a framework with opportunities and challenges that the fresh produce system must face in adopting decentralised systems for managing supply chain data like BCT. </abstract>