Walmart improves Food Safety with Food Safety Collaboration Center in Beijing

BEIJING - Walmart recently opened its Food Safety Collaboration Center in Beijing. The new initiative means the multinational is collaborating with IBM and Tsinghua University to improve food quality through the supply chain. It means the food safety partnership is utilizing blockchain technology to provide better food tracking and consumer safety.

The traditional process of tracking food quality through the supply chain can be a difficult task. Over the years there have been many recalls involving contamination, bad ingredients, and uninspected crops. Many people believe rather than outside regulation the problems can be handled directly from the production and manufacturing process.

Working in unison with IBM and Tsinghua University, the groups are building a new model for “food traceability, supply chain transparency, and audibility.”

The collaborative effort will be utilizing the IBM and Linux Foundation-led Hyperledger Project architecture. By harnessing a distributed ledger framework, food production can be digitally tracked in an immutable environment. The tracking entails storage temperatures, expiration dates, farm origination details, batch numbers, and much more relevant data about food being delivered worldwide.

Frank Yiannas, Vice President, Food Safety, Walmart said during the announcement: “As advocates of promoting greater transparency in the food system for our customers, we look forward to working with IBM and Tsinghua University to explore how this technology might be used as a more effective food traceability solution,”With the Hyperledger fabric, all of the food item information is entered into the blockchain throughout every step in the supply chain. 

“Advanced technology has reached into so many aspects of modern life, but it has lagged in food traceability, and in particular in creating more secure food supply chains. Our collaboration with Walmart and Tsinghua University is a step of global significance to change that,” said Bridget van Kralingen, Senior Vice President, of IBM’s Industry Platforms. “Food touches all of us, everywhere, so we are experimenting in China with Walmart and Tsinghua given the size and scale of food consumption in this country.”