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An Open and Fully Decentralised Platform for Safe Food Traceability
Abstract
Concerns about food safety have grown across society in recent years. Building a trustworthy traceability system is essential for effectively identifying and preventing food safety issues as well as tracing the responsible parties. The entire food supply chain, which includes the stages of production, processing , warehousing, transportation, and sale, must be precisely recorded, shared, and traced. Traditional traceability systems suffer from problems like data invisibility, tampering, and the leakage of sensitive information. This paper proposes an open platform for a food safety traceability system that indefinitely and incessantly stores and records all transactions, events, and activities on the blockchain's immutable ledger linked with IPFS-a peer-to-peer decentralised file system-for storing and providing maximum transparency and traceability. The platform leverages the blockchain's characteristics such as immutability, transparency, smart contracts, and consensus algorithms to make it ideal for food safety traceability systems. But more importantly, it mirrors the food supply chain making it a pluggable toolbox for all stakeholders across the food chain to adapt to their system irrespective of the food products they deal with since it is a multi-asset system as well. It could be even adapted for non-food products that have a supply chain similar to the typical food supply chain. Simulation results show that there is the complete success of all the blockchain transactions on our platform with real-time responsiveness.
... High initial implementation cost, requirement for internet connectivity and digital lit-eracy, potential resistance to technology adoption [20] Palm oil High multi-asset system, Scalable blockchain solution, realtime responsiveness, implemented prototype Complexity in implementation, potential challenges in integrat-ing diverse stakeholders [21] Cocoa Moderate Improves supply chain trans-parency, enhances sustainabil-ity, real-time access to prices High initial investment, com-plexity in integrating with exist-ing systems, complex decision-making process [22] Cocoa High Reduces deforestation, child la-bor, forced labor, increases transparency ...
This review paper delves into the global agricultural food supply chains through the lens of African perspectives, examining the role of blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies in transforming food traceability. It assesses the applicability and efficacy of these innovations in addressing critical issues such as food fraud, contamination, and systemic inefficiencies from an African viewpoint. By engaging in an in-depth analysis of relevant studies, this work dissects the technical, economic, legal, and operational facets of employing blockchain and IoT in the agri-food sector. The findings illuminate the transformative potential these technologies hold for enhancing food safety and transparency across supply chains. However, the review also brings to light significant hurdles related to scalability, cost-effectiveness, and regulatory frameworks that must be surmounted. Advocating for a context-sensitive application of blockchain and IoT, the paper highlights the importance of adapting these technologies to fit the diverse socioeconomic and infrastructural realities prevalent in African countries. Offering valuable insights to stakeholders in agricultural technology and food safety, this comprehensive review outlines a roadmap for future research and strategic implementation efforts aimed at leveraging blockchain and IoT for the development of secure, sustainable food systems.
Since the inception of blockchain-based cryptocurrencies, researchers have been fascinated with the idea of integrating blockchain technology into other fields, such as health and manufacturing. Despite the benefits of blockchain, which include immutability, transparency, and traceability, certain issues that limit its integration with IIoT still linger. One of these prominent problems is the storage inefficiency of the blockchain. Due to the append-only nature of the blockchain, the growth of the blockchain ledger inevitably leads to high storage requirements for blockchain peers. This poses a challenge for its integration with the IIoT, where high volumes of data are generated at a relatively faster rate than in applications such as financial systems. Therefore, there is a need for blockchain architectures that deal effectively with the rapid growth of the blockchain ledger. This paper discusses the problem of storage inefficiency in existing blockchain systems, how this affects their scalability, and the challenges that this poses to their integration with IIoT. This paper explores existing solutions for improving the storage efficiency of blockchain–IIoT systems, classifying these proposed solutions according to their approaches and providing insight into their effectiveness through a detailed comparative analysis and examination of their long-term sustainability. Potential directions for future research on the enhancement of storage efficiency in blockchain–IIoT systems are also discussed.
The increase of the Internet of Things (IoT) calls for secure solutions for industrial applications. The security of IoT can be potentially improved by blockchain. However, blockchain technology suffers scalability issues which hinders integration with IoT. Solutions to blockchain’s scalability issues, such as minimizing the computational complexity of consensus algorithms or blockchain storage requirements, have received attention. However, to realize the full potential of blockchain in IoT, the inefficiencies of its inter-peer communication must also be addressed. For example, blockchain uses a flooding technique to share blocks, resulting in duplicates and inefficient bandwidth usage. Moreover, blockchain peers use a random neighbor selection (RNS) technique to decide on other peers with whom to exchange blockchain data. As a result, the peer-to-peer (P2P) topology formation limits the effective achievable throughput. This paper provides a survey on the state-of-the-art network structures and communication mechanisms used in blockchain and establishes the need for network-based optimization. Additionally, it discusses the blockchain architecture and its layers categorizes existing literature into the layers and provides a survey on the state-of-the-art optimization frameworks, analyzing their effectiveness and ability to scale. Finally, this paper presents recommendations for future work.
Food holds a major role in human beings’ lives and in human societies in general across the planet. The food and agriculture sector is considered to be a major employer at a worldwide level. The large number and heterogeneity of the stakeholders involved from different sectors, such as farmers, distributers, retailers, consumers, etc., renders the agricultural supply chain management as one of the most complex and challenging tasks. It is the same vast complexity of the agriproducts supply chain that limits the development of global and efficient transparency and traceability solutions. The present paper provides an overview of the application of blockchain technologies for enabling traceability in the agri-food domain. Initially, the paper presents definitions, levels of adoption, tools and advantages of traceability, accompanied with a brief overview of the functionality and advantages of blockchain technology. It then conducts an extensive literature review on the integration of blockchain into traceability systems. It proceeds with discussing relevant existing commercial applications, highlighting the relevant challenges and future prospects of the application of blockchain technologies in the agri-food supply chain.
Protecting the environment and enhancing food security are among the world’s greatest challenges. Fish consumption is widely considered to be the single significant dietary source of methylmercury. Nevertheless, by synthesizing data from the past six decades and using a variety of models, we find that rice could be a significant global dietary source of human methylmercury exposure, especially in South and Southeast Asia. In 2013, globalization caused 9.9% of human methylmercury exposure via the international rice trade and significantly aggravated rice-derived exposure in Africa (62%), Central Asia (98%) and Europe (42%). In 2016, 180 metric tons of mercury were generated in rice plants, 14-fold greater than that exported from oceans via global fisheries. We suggest that future research should consider both the joint ingestion of rice with fish and the food trade in methylmercury exposure assessments, and anthropogenic biovectors such as crops should be considered in the global mercury cycle. Fish consumption is considered to be the only significant dietary source of MeHg. Here the authors show that rice could also be a significant global dietary source, especially in South and Southeast Asia. International rice trade and joint ingestion of fish and rice could aggravate the MeHg exposure levels in many areas.
Traceability is the ability to chronologically interrelate uniquely identifiable entities in a way that is verifiable. Traceability for foods is that there should be uniquely identifiable consignments that can be followed through a production chain. The Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) uses the traceability concept to define a link between producers of sustainable products and end users of these products. The goal of RSPO is to increase sustainable production of palm oil products. The mechanisms for supply chain organization are designed to contribute to that. This chapter discusses the concept of traceability in the food safety sense. Both RSPO-certified and non-certified palm products are traceable because the European food safety legislation and the Association for International Trading in Oils, Fats and Oilseeds (FOSFA) contract clauses require operators to know their suppliers and their customers. Both RSPO-certified and regular palm oil are usually not traceable in the sense that at any given moment in time, the origins of a consignment can be identified. However, there is one exception: If RSPO-certified Sustainable Palm Oil is traded in accordance with the RSPO Identity Preserved system, it is always known where a consignment came from.
In recent years, we media, i.e., micro-blogs, have drawn increasing attention to their roles by exposing food safety scandals in China. In this paper, a typical case of a scandal concerning “set-style yogurt and jelly event” reported by a micro-blog was studied and analyzed in terms of its dissemination mode and the mechanism of how a micro-blog from “opinion leaders” affected public attention. Related sales data of set-style yogurt and jelly products were obtained after the event from a supermarket corporation in Beijing and used to analyze trends affected by the scandal. The results indicate that in the new media age, we media has greatly increased dissemination of the voices of “opinion leaders” and triggered large-scale communication of food safety messages to the public. In this serious information asymmetry situation between public and food manufacturer, food-safety scandals revealed by we media could easily be noticed by consumers and further affect their judgments of expected utility and their purchasing behavior. Sales volume decreases and negative influence on brand reputation might contribute to correcting food manufacturers’ behavior. We media could be an effective tool to improve the food-safety status of the market.
The food industry is becoming more customer-oriented and needs faster response times to deal with food scandals and incidents. Good traceability systems help to minimize the production and distribution of unsafe or poor quality products, thereby minimizing the potential for bad publicity, liability, and recalls. The current food labelling system cannot guarantee that the food is authentic, good quality and safe. Therefore, traceability is applied as a tool to assist in the assurance of food safety and quality as well as to achieve consumer confidence. This paper presents comprehensive information about traceability with regards to safety and quality in the food supply chain.
A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending. We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network. The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work. The longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence of events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power. As long as a majority of CPU power is controlled by nodes that are not cooperating to attack the network, they'll generate the longest chain and outpace attackers. The network itself requires minimal structure. Messages are broadcast on a best effort basis, and nodes can leave and rejoin the network at will, accepting the longest proof-of-work chain as proof of what happened while they were gone.
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