Darshana Jain 
October 4, 2022 
What’s the best meal you’ve ever had?
Is there a slight smile playing on your lips as your tongue recalls that familiar taste?
This is the magic of food. Food is everything. From the highest rungs of society to the lowest, food is our common ground. We live to eat. It is an integral part of our stories, anecdotes, and memories.
This is why food safety is one of the biggest concerns facing the world right now. It’s a massive topic of debate around the world and WHO has raised the issue year after year. With the scary figures given by WHO, it is no wonder that everyone is looking to the food industry for answers. And among the proposed solutions, using blockchain for food traceability is clearly the frontrunner. How? Let’s find out
Consumers’ expectations regarding the quality of their food are constantly fluctuating. They want to know the source of their food and the practices used in its manufacturing. Blockchain-based traceability helps customers understand the exact place of origin of their food, the actual producers, and the freshness of food.
How traceability works
Workers at each stage in the food supply chain update the database with information about the product. A consumer who wishes to know the origin of the food or where the processing has taken place, can go back and trace the activity. This offers conclusive advantages such as the reduction of food fraud and false labeling.
How Blockchain Works In Food Industry
Blockchain can work in various ways in the food industry. Here are some of the lucrative use cases that you will see in the blockchain.
Improving Food Traceability
Blockchain is fully equipped to handle the tracing of the food from suppliers to the consumer who buys it. Thus, companies can harness this power to increase their visibility on the production line and offer a better quality of food to the market.
Ensuring Food Safety
Another great benefit of blockchain is you can use it for food safety. Blockchain in food safety can help consumers be at ease and buy all their products without worrying about contamination or any other issue. As the food industry is still not suited to track down the true source of the contamination. In most cases, it can even go undetected until it’s too late. So, using blockchain, companies can monitor their handling of the raw elements and the finished products. More so, they can even handle their byproducts more carefully to maintain the quality and standard of their foods without any issues.
Food Industry Supplier Selection
A finished product is as good as the raw material used in its making. Therefore, the quality of raw materials is paramount. The raw material is directly linked with suppliers’ credibility. Using blockchain in the food supply chain, companies can connect with better suppliers where the suppliers have to offer provenance of their quality. So, blockchain can create a marketplace where suppliers can connect with the buyers and bid on certain projects based on their quality.
Meeting Operational Demands
Companies find it difficult to keep up with the increasing demands and to fulfill the same in a short span of time. But using blockchain in the food supply chain, the companies can finally deal with the problem. Blockchain helps keep track of all the elements of the production line and meet up with the demands of daily operation.
Improved Inventory Management
Blockchain in the food supply chain automates the process of food production and gets rid of discrepancies within the production line. Therefore, it can significantly shorten the Lead Time and evidently improve inventory management.
Prevents Price Coercion
Companies change the price of their food due to many reasons – social or environmental, making it one of the most volatile industries at the moment. Blockchain help reduces the cost of making the products. It can also cut off all the middlemen fees, ultimately reducing the final pricing for the consumers.
Eliminating Counterfeit Products
Blockchain helps to eradicate the increased number of counterfeit products. If people start to eat counterfeit products, they can fall seriously ill, and it can even lead to death. But, blockchain in food traceability can solve the issue instantly. As blockchain can track all the products from the production line to the consumer, it can ensure whether the product is authentic or not. More so, it can also reduce the scope of counterfeit products getting into the market by identifying the source of the problem.
Reducing Food Waste
Using blockchain in food traceability can help reduce food wastage. With blockchain, the companies can start to trace the foods to maintain the health codes and follow all the guidelines and improve their management system. As they can keep track of everything online, it’s easy to improve efficiency and reduce food wastage to a minimum, even in real time.
Provide Food Supply Chain Provenance
You can use blockchain in food safety to maintain the provenance, starting from the farmers to the retail store. Just by scanning the QR code on the product, a customer can see the history behind that food product and be assured that it is what they claim it is.
Proving Label Claims
Blockchain can be used in food safety initiatives to fight the problems related to food labeling. As blockchain will record every single element you used in the making process of a product, you can make that record public to your consumers in order to prove your label claims.
As you already know by now, blockchain can offer a lot of benefits in the food industry. The food industry is full of issues, and without finding a proper solution, consumers are at risk. Therefore, using blockchain in the industry can help eliminate most of the persisting issues and ensure a better and healthier community in the future.
