Walmart’s American stores are looking at blockchain technology to tackle food safety challenges. The new equipment is being used to track food supply from origin to sale.
According to a Bloomberg article, the blockchain trial could change how Wal-Mart Stores, monitors food, allowing for improvements in food safety.
The blockchain is a distributed ledger where growers, distributors and retailers can record transactions securely. The database also allows for detailed analysis of inventories and interactions along the supply chain.
It is often a struggle to identify and remove food that’s been recalled, meaning that it can take days to identify the product, shipment and vendor. The blockchain analysis will allow Walmart to obtain crucial data from a single receipt, including suppliers, details the food’s origin, and who inspected it.
“With blockchain, you can do strategic removals, and let consumers and companies have confidence,” says Frank Yiannas, vice-president of food safety Walmart. “We believe that enhanced traceability is good for other aspects of the food systems. We hope you could capture other important attributes that would inform decisions around food flows, and even get more efficient at it.”
If the tests are successful, Walmart will expand the technology to other products and locations.
