Last year, Carrefour became the first company to use blockchain for European food tracing. The firm has now extended that service, which initially only covered chicken and tomatoes, to include the retailer’s newest product to be added to blockchain: Carrefour Quality Line (CQL) fresh micro-filtered full-fat milk.
Starting this month, customers will be able to use their smartphones to trace CQL milk across its entire supply chain.
They will be able to check that the milk lives up to its marketing; namely that the cows are fed GMO-free food and reared on modestly sized farms with best practices in mind.
Customers will also be able to find out at which farms the milk was produced, when the milk was packaged and when it was placed on the shelves. They can even see the GPS coordinates of the farm location.
Food traceability seems to be becoming important for Carrefour. Last year the company joined IBM’s Food Trust network. They joined several high profile companies: Dole, Driscoll’s, Golden State Foods, Kroger, McCormick and Company, McLane Company, Nestlé, Tyson Foods, Unilever and Walmart.
Carrefour isn’t the only retailer where food traceability is a high priority. Walmart has asked all its leafy green vegetable customers to adopt IBM’s Food Trust following multiple E. Coli outbreaks in the U.S. last year. Another French retailer Auchan is working with startup TE-FOOD to track organic carrots, potatoes and chicken supply chains. In the Netherlands, Albert Heijn is using blockchain for tracing orange juice.
On March 26-27 2019 Hanson Wade are running a conference, Blockchain for the Food & Beverage Supply Chain in San Francisco. Ledger Insights is a media partner.
