Yesterday the Sustainable Shrimp Partnership announced that it is participating in IBM’s Food Trust blockchain ecosystem. This new initiative will provide food traceability for SSP’s shrimps throughout the supply chain, enabling retailers and consumers to trace their shrimps back to its source.
The new platform leverages blockchain technology to improve accountability and transparency for customers, providing information for the whole journey of SSP’s premium Ecuadorian farmed shrimp production.
“Food fraud is on the rise,” stated Jose Antonio Camposano, Executive President of the National Chamber of Aquaculture of Ecuador. “Consumers have a right to know where their food is from and how it was produced. By using blockchain technology we can provide complete traceability on our products and our practices – for the first time consumers can have complete trust and assurance on what they are buying.”
Price competitive shrimp farming has resulted in poor social practices and excessive use of antibiotics.
SSP member companies share a joint mission to drive the future of shrimp aquaculture to be clean, sustainable, and prosperous on a global basis. Conceived in Ecuador, members of the SSP are committed to promoting transparency within the industry, providing high-quality products while being socially and environmentally friendly.
Participants will now enter data about how their shrimps are produced onto IBM’s Food Trust platform. This data can be accessed by retailers globally, which ensures the quality of shrimp being sold. In the future, SSP has plans to launch an app for customers to access this data.
The IBM Food Trust initiatives provide real-time and immutable records of food products to verify supply chain history. The platform enables data sharing between different parties securely and transparently. This technology can be used to verify SSP’s shrimp qualification, confirming that the shrimps are antibiotic free and certified to Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) Standard.
Matin Hagels, IBM Latin America Blockchain executive, added: “Blockchain technology has the potential to transform any industry, especially when we have multi-stakeholder environments, businesses and organizations such as in supply chain. Working with SSP and its ecosystem of suppliers, distributors and more, can help us ease the pain points of the food industry.”
Other seafood related blockchain initiatives include Bumbe Bee Tuna with SAP in the U.S., in Switzerland “Raimond Freres” branded tuna and the OpenSC food provenance blockchain from the World Wildlife Fund.
