How Blockchain Can Assure Your Vaccines are Safe and Your Coffee is Really Single Origin.
Blockchain is still in the experimental stage as current businesses brainstorm ways to incorporate and new businesses based on blockchain are launching and testing. As blockchain makes its way into the mainstream, there will be a lot of failures, there will be some success and everyone will learn how this technology will fit in and transform the business, social good and economic landscape.
Assuring authenticity of product’s sources seems to be one of the areas where blockchain and the companies implementing this use case will thrive. Blockchain creates a traceable and unfalsifiable recorded ledger of each step in a process — whether that step is the transfer of a bitcoin from one wallet to another to the transfer of a strawberry from a farm to a grocery store.
With a growing trend in customers valuing transparency, ethical practices in terms of manufacturing and environmental impact, as well as impact on the health of the end user — backing up these claims with a way to validate should end up being a valuable competitive edge and for any company that jumps on early.
According to Deloitte: The availability of this information within blockchain can increase traceability of material supply chain, lower losses from counterfeit and gray market, improve visibility and compliance over outsourced contract manufacturing, and potentially enhance an organization’s position as a leader in responsible manufacturing.”
Here are 5 specific ways Blockchain technology can be of value to verify authenticity.
1 - Food: Blockchain technology can be used to trace the farm to shelf process of the food industry. The demand for organic food is growing worldwide. With concerns about GMO’s and their unknown effects. The dangers of pesticides are coming more into the public’s awareness daily. Take the high profile case of groundskeeper DeWayne “Lee” Johnson, who was just awarded $289 million in his case against Monsanto after they had promised him the pesticide he sprayed regularly for work was safe. The WHO (World Health Organization) stated otherwise. People want to know where their food is coming from. The farm to table movement is. growing, but many articles are coming out stating that restaurants claiming to be organic are not really organic. There are multiple articles along the same lines ranging from milk, to the products at the grocery store. The consistent dialogue is consumers do not know who to trust.
Startup Provenance is working to solve this using blockchain. They have partnered with the Soil Association Certification in the UK to test a pilot program where customers will be able to tap Eversfield Organics bacon in As Nature Intended shops and be able to see the supply chain journey. Currently, over 200 retailers and producers in the food and drinks industry use provenance — according to their website. A few other case studies included proving single origin coffee really was single origin and that yellowfin tuna in Indonesia was sustainable and slavery free.
By adding this level of transparency, the relationship of trust between the customer and the companies that are openly sharing and backing up the integrity of their supply chain can strengthen. The food companies that add this layer of verification can take the lead by not only making the claims but proving they are genuine and have nothing to hide.
2 - Medicine: I was appalled to learn that a billion dollar industry thriving in Africa is counterfeit pharmaceutical drugs. In Africa there was a major issue with people selling counterfeit HIV pills. That issue is not limited to HIV pills or to Africa. According to WHO in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America more than 30% of the pills can be fraudulent. Creating false pills is very easy to do using chalk or flour and putting it into a pill shape. The packaging and branding are so well done that it is impossible to distinguish.
A group of pharmaceutical companies including Genentech and Pfizer are creating and testing the MediLedger Project. This project uses blockchain technology to trace the supply chain. The ultimate goal is to have all outlets from the drug manufacturers to the wholesalers and on to hospitals recorded and trackable with this untamperable technology.
Along with protecting against counterfeit this also helps protect against thievery — if the pills are stolen there is a record of where they last were and under whose care.
The main obstacle has been getting all the large corporations involved on board but a law recently passes called the Drug Supply Chain Security Act requiring companies to work towards creating a more consistent drug-tracking system.
3 - Fashion: If you think you are ordering a “genuine” Marc Jacobs bag on sale for half price from Ebay, you want to be sure you are getting what you are expecting. However counterfeit fashion is a much more serious issue than we realize. It is not about people not wanting to have a knockoff when they would rather have the real thing. The fake fashion industry at $450 billion is organized crime and has no checks and balances on environmental procedures or labor practices. Many of the manufacturers use people who have been trafficked including children.
As movies such as “The True Cost” explain who actually pays the price for the too good to be true prices of fast fashion, a sweatshop factory in Bangladesh burns down killing over 100 garment workers and exposing the brutal working conditions and more indie designers go transparent in their process, the slow fashion movement has been gaining traction. More and more people care where their clothes come from, who made them, how those people were treated and what impact these designs are having on the environment. People do not just want to buy an anonymous label they can show off, they want to buy a piece they love from a real person who did not harm other people in their creative process.
Now would be the perfect time for fashion designers to be open about their supply chain. Everlane has had tremendous success with this model, but it requires taking their word. Designers can take the next step by creating a traceable and verifiable supply chain using blockchain technology. Provenance once again is testing this theory tracking designer Martine Jarlgaard’s sustainable alpaca fleece from farm to showroom.
As people get clearer on the reality of the fast-fashion industry, hopefully the demand for transparency with traceable backup will grow. Getting to the market early would be an advantage for any fashion label.
4 - Vaccines: Also in the medical world is the issue of faulty vaccines. In China this past year there have been a few scandals of pharmacies selling faulty DPT (combination of vaccines to prevent against diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus.) and rabies vaccines, then altering the data to cover this up. This has resulted in a huge social media scandal, although many posts were censored, as terrified parents try to figure out if their children was one of the recipients. In 2016 there was another vaccine scandal in China when it was discovered that a criminal organization was sold millions of improperly stored vaccines. No one had any idea which vaccines they got, which ones their children got.
The blockchain community in China was instantly vocal that this would be the perfect tracking technology for a public inspection of vaccines. Despite influential and powerful people in the blockchain community jumping in, there are no companies currently solving this.
While the government has been attempting to censor this discussion with articles and searches on this topic apparently hidden, it is blockchain that is making this discussion possible.
According to Coindesk, “The original article (about this topic which was censored) — dubbed “the King of Vaccine,” which unveiled the newest scandal — is currently blocked on Chinese social media. Yet someone has permanently recorded it on the ethereum blockchain, as shown on Etherescan.”
Other issues with vaccines are wastage. Vaccines arriving spoiled. According to UNICEF 33.3% of storage units in high income countries and 37.1%in low-income countries consist of vaccines that were exposed to temperatures lower than the recommended ranges. People will show up to receive vaccines only to be turned away because of the shortage due to the spoilage.
Vaccines supply chains are exceptionally complex — vaccines go from manufacturers to distributors, to re-packagers to wholesalers before reaching the final location — pharmacy, doctor’s office, hospital.
According to worldbank.org Blockchain would be an ideal solution because it is scalable and able to store high quantities of data and it is verifiable and audible in real time. It is also efficient and solves the problem at a reasonable cost. All one would have to do would be checked the ledger to assure the vaccines were not exposed for a prolonged period of time in an area with risky temperatures. While no one company is solving this now, hopefully the motivation of the blockchain community in China will launch a solution shortly.
5 - Allergies: While the current blockchain solutions for food are based on tracing ingerients in terms of organic or small farm, using blockchain for allergy safe foods could be a great opportunity for a new business model. There are people with nut allergies so severe that if they eat a bite of something that was processed in a factory near nuts or was stored near nuts they could become very ill and possibly die. What if a new “allergy-safe” brand could back up that claim and assure that no ingredient in the bag of chips you bought came into contact with nuts in the processing plant, in the transportation process, at any part in the process. No company is currently doing so, but the model Provenance is using to trace other foods in their current use cases, would be identical. All steps of the supply chain would be accounted for. Those with deadly allergies would have another layer of assurance.
Overall we are at an exciting and experimental time with blockchain where we can test and try, succeed and fail as we all learn the best ways blockchain and the accountability it provides helps solve problems and moves us towards a more and more trustworthy and transparent culture.
