For the food manufacturing sector of regulators, IoT and blockchain can provide more transparency in data, quick responses to data analysis, and other improvements, such as food origin certification:
In July 2018, the Food Standards Agency (FSA), an independent government department working across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland to protect public health and consumers' wider interests with regard to food, successfully completed a blockchain pilot.
Sian Thomas, Head of Information Management at the FSA, said the following:
The government's role is to be the one that regulates. It is clear that other organizations that act in this area, alongside the government, now have trouble clearing inspections. Even though there are several control mechanisms, such as visual analysis and lab data that needs to be obtained by producers, inspections are still susceptible to corruption and do not have complete information regarding origin control.
However, as is obvious, the chain is long, and finding the actual responsible party for any deviation in a quick and objective way is not an easy task. In addition, the corruption that is always present in this kind of activity also affects the whole chain.
From this information, we can conclude that the following challenges in this link of the chain need to be addressed:
- Guaranteeing that the formulation of products follows the rules specified for those products
- Ensuring that information is reliable and auditable
Let's move on to the next link: transporters.