Walmart & IBM Improves Food Safety With Blockchain Tech

Walmart is once again demonstrating its stance with adopting new technologies by announcing that it is undertaking a trial with the blockchain technology to tackle food safety, according to a report from Bloomberg. Each week Walmart Stores Inc. serves around 260 million customers; however, this means that monitoring its food and taking action when needed can prove quite a challenge. Not only that, but once a food source has been identified and recalled, this requires time and effort to remove the bad batch from all the stores, not just the one it was located at. However, with the use of....

Retail giant Walmart and multinational technology company, IBM, have teamed up put Chinese pork on the blockchain, ensuring consumer confidence in the food industry, reports Fortune. Teaming up with Tsinghua University in Beijing, it is hoped that by digitally tracking the movement of pork in China on bitcoin’s underlying distributed ledger, it will prevent food disasters such as those that have been reported in China. According to Forbes, in 2008, a toxic mixture of milk and infant formula combined with melamine, killed six children, put thousands of others in hospital and sickened much....

Walmart has partnered with IBM and Tsinghua University to implement blockchain technology for food safety. The Chinese food industry is notorious for poor quality standards. In few instances, potentially lethal substances were used as adulterants, resulting in a number of deaths. In order to prevent such incidents in the future, strict monitoring and control over the manufacture and supply chain are very important. The leading global retailer Walmart has partnered with IBM to do just that. Both companies are working alongside Tsinghua University in Beijing to use blockchain-based solutions....

Walmart, a $214 bln retail giant, has begun to utilize the Blockchain technology to identify and remove recalled foods from its products list. IBM and Walmart have been collaborating since October, when Bridget van Kralingen, senior vice president of IBM, stated: “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.” Walmart’s infrastructure. Currently, Walmart depends on an IT infrastructure, which requires the company days to search its database and discover the origin of a product.....

Trying to make pork products in China safer was just the first step of Walmart’s global plans for blockchain. The pilot unveiled last week uses technology from the Hyperledger project to track pork shipping information, including farm origination details, batch numbers and storage temperatures on a secure blockchain. Over the months ahead, the retail giant wants to expand on that work. Walmart vice president of global food safety Frank Yiannas told CoinDesk that, in anticipation of a successful pilot launch, the company is already looking to the future for other applications. Yiannas told....