This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Manav Bhatia
The global food supply chain is vast and complex, stretching across multiple countries and involving countless stakeholders before products reach consumers. With rising concerns about contamination, fraud, and lack of transparency, food traceability has become more critical than ever. Blockchain technology is now transforming this process by ensuring accuracy, transparency, and trust throughout the supply chain.
Since 2017, innovators have been advancing solutions based on blockchain and Verifiable Credentials to create secure and efficient systems for verifying data. When applied to food traceability, blockchain provides farmers, businesses, governments, and consumers with the confidence that food products are safe, authentic, and accurately documented.
The Importance of Food Traceability
Food traceability is the ability to track a product from its source, such as a farm or processing unit, through every stage of the supply chain including distribution and retail. Reliable traceability ensures that companies can verify product origins and ingredients, maintain quality standards, respond to recalls efficiently, and reduce foodborne illnesses. It also assures customers that organic certifications and sustainability claims are legitimate, which helps strengthen consumer trust in the food system.
Challenges in Traditional Food Traceability
Traditional food supply chains face serious challenges in maintaining transparency and safety. Many companies still rely on paper-based records that are vulnerable to manipulation and fraud. Recordkeeping is often fragmented across multiple stakeholders, which creates delays and makes it difficult to trace products quickly during a contamination outbreak.
Foodborne illnesses highlight the cost of these shortcomings. According to the World Health Organization, nearly 600 million people fall ill each year due to contaminated food, and 420,000 of them die. Outbreak investigations often take weeks due to outdated processes, as seen in the European Union when contaminated fenugreek seeds caused widespread illness and financial losses worth billions.
Fraud is another challenge. Invoices, certifications, and product documents are often falsified, leading to damages estimated at 30 to 40 billion US dollars annually. The lack of a unified, tamper-proof system undermines accountability and reduces public trust in food safety.
Blockchain for Food Traceability
Blockchain food traceability systems address these issues by creating a secure, transparent, and verifiable record of every transaction across the supply chain.
Key components include:
Blockchain: A decentralized ledger that records all transactions in a tamper-resistant way.
Verifiable Credentials (VCs): Cryptographically secured digital records issued by trusted stakeholders such as farmers, processors, or inspectors.
Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs): Unique digital identifiers that can be linked to products, batches, or stakeholders, enabling complete traceability.
With blockchain food traceability, every batch of products can be assigned a DID, and Verifiable Credentials can be added at each stage of its journey. Customers can simply scan a QR code to instantly access details such as product origin, certifications, storage conditions, and the farming practices used. This process, which traditionally took weeks, can now be completed in seconds.
Benefits of Blockchain in Food Traceability
The integration of blockchain into food traceability brings measurable benefits to all stakeholders.
It ensures data accuracy and prevents tampering through cryptographic security. Outbreaks can be identified quickly, reducing waste and financial loss. Transparency across the supply chain builds consumer confidence in product authenticity. Fraudulent activities such as falsified certifications or manipulated records can be effectively prevented.
Blockchain food traceability also assists companies in complying with food safety regulations, such as the FDA’s Food Safety Modernization Act. Government agencies gain a reliable mechanism for monitoring compliance and protecting citizens from contaminated products. For consumers, scanning a QR code at the point of purchase provides immediate access to product details, certifications, and even information about the communities that produced their food.
Adoption of Blockchain Food Traceability
Several global companies have already adopted blockchain food traceability systems with remarkable results. Walmart has reduced the time to trace mangoes from seven days to just two seconds. Carrefour provides customers with QR codes that display the origins and certifications of organic products. Nestlé uses blockchain to track coffee beans from farms in Brazil, Rwanda, and Colombia, allowing customers to verify harvest details and certifications instantly. Bumblebee Foods uses blockchain to monitor tuna from catch to market, ensuring sustainability and preventing fraud.
Key Considerations for Implementation
Organizations adopting blockchain food traceability must first define their objectives, such as improving food safety, enhancing sustainability, or increasing transparency. A pilot project focusing on a single product line can serve as the starting point, followed by gradual expansion.
Strong data governance practices are essential to ensure accuracy and accountability. Products can be registered at class, batch, or individual item level with unique DIDs. Each transaction should be documented with Verifiable Credentials to maintain a complete and auditable record.
Equally important is aligning stakeholder interests. Farmers, processors, distributors, retailers, regulators, and consumers all stand to gain from blockchain food traceability, but education and collaboration are required to ensure engagement and adoption.
Conclusion
Traditional food traceability systems are outdated, fragmented, and vulnerable to manipulation, which compromises safety, increases fraud, and reduces trust. Blockchain food traceability systems, powered by Verifiable Credentials and decentralized identifiers, address these issues by creating a secure, transparent, and tamper-resistant ecosystem for the entire supply chain.
This approach ensures accurate and reliable data, faster response to contamination, enhanced trust between stakeholders, and greater consumer confidence. As blockchain continues to transform global food systems, solutions like FoodTraze are playing a crucial role in helping farmers, businesses, and governments build safer, more transparent, and trustworthy food supply chains.
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Manav Bhatia