Traceability in the Food Industry

Abstract: Throughout history to this day, the food industry has been facing numerous food contamination incidents. Globalization and an increasing complexity of the food supply chain creates the need for high trust in the information exchanged, therefore there is a lot of focus on food traceability. While there have been improvements to food traceability by the advancements in information systems, transparency and trustworthiness of data still remain key problems. Blockchain technology has been one of the latest technological developments that has the potential to greatly improve trust between the members in a food supply chain. However, blockchain technology is still in an early adoption phase. This thesis aims to evaluate blockchain technology in the context of food traceability. The authors present a framework that compares blockchain technology characteristics against the driving forces of food traceability and evaluates challenges faced in the adoption of blockchain technology. The findings of the study indicate that blockchain is in a good position to positively impact trust in the food industry by increasing transparency and integrity of data. However, blockchain technology may be very difficult to implement in long chains due high need of collaboration between organizations and poor scalability.