ANNOUNCEMENT: European Union Supports the Food Safety Market with Trace Labs to Facilitate Blockchain Adoption

OriginTrail
OriginTrail
Published in
5 min readJun 24, 2020

A transparent, data-powered certification ecosystem for safe food supply chains

Within the global food industry, food growers, manufacturers, processors, importers, exporters, distributors, retailers, and packagers are all expected to be certified according to food safety standards. This highlights the importance of food safety and certification. The food certification market (expected to be worth $11.45 billion by 2023) is vertical and multi-sided, and shares a common need: all involved stakeholders should share food safety data in well-defined, automated, and robust ways, using secured and controlled mechanisms that enhance trust and collaboration.

The EU-funded the Food Safety Market (FSM) project will develop an industrial data platform to give a digital boost to the way food certification takes place in Europe. Specifically, it will build on state-of-the-art blockchain technologies to create an open and collaborative virtual environment that facilitates the exchange and connection of data between different food safety actors interested in sharing information that is critical to certification. The project will conduct extensive piloting with European providers of inspection and certification services.

Having partnered with 10 reputable organisations from 8 European countries, Trace Labs — core developers of OriginTrail — are playing an integral role in supporting the FSM consortium with their open-source infrastructure for trusted and secure data exchange. Moreover, the FSM consortium will be made a part of Trace Alliance — an EU based, non-profit association within the OriginTrail ecosystem that functions as an inclusive and collaborative hub, connecting organizations aiming to work together and solve complex supply chain challenges using blockchain technology. This will allow for a wider dissemination of the FSM project results and allow other interested organisations to join the initiative, fostering collaboration at a European level

“The agri-food certification sector spans across diverse segments of the agri-food supply chain, involving various stakeholders (from farmers and processors to certification bodies and consumers). The main objective of The FSM project is to create a transparent data-powered certification ecosystem for a safe food supply chain. With the global food industry relying on getting certified according to food safety standards, the exchange of data and the transparency across the supply chain is of paramount importance. Moreover, through remote audits it aims to lower the cost of certification by fully digitizing food safety data transactions. The digitalization challenge is important for both corporations and SMEs, so TheFSM will enable automated, predictable, and secure food certification data exchange supporting the localized needs of EU food SMEs and enhancing the innovation capacity of EU certification bodies, IT service providers, foodtech and agtech companies” said Nikos Manouselis, the CEO of Agroknow, the company coordinating the FSM consortium.

“Making food supply chains safe requires enhancing trust in systems handling both products and data. Building the FSM utilizing trust enhancing technologies of OriginTrail Decentralized Knowledge Graph and blockchain, with the foundation in the semantic technologies and open data models such as Verifiable Credentials, enables a decentralized marketplace for certification and traceability data residing in existing IT systems. Together with our consortium partners within TheFSM we are aiming at utilizing open source, neutral technology to further empower the users of already existing platforms for food certification and safety systems“ told Branimir Rakić, the CTO of Trace Labs.

The project was kicked-off virtually in three half-day sessions during the last week of March 2020, where the consortium set the plan ahead.

Food Safety Market Consortium Partners

Project Information

Source: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/871703

About Food Safety Market
The Food Safety Market (TheFSM) aims to transform the European food certification market with the power of Big Data and the support of blockchain technology. The EU-funded TheFSM project will develop an industrial data platform to give a digital boost to the way food certification takes place in Europe. Specifically, it will build upon state-of-the-art blockchain technologies to create an open and collaborative virtual environment that facilitates the exchange and connection of data between different food safety actors interested in sharing information that is critical to certification. The project will conduct extensive piloting with European providers of inspection and certification services.

To learn more about the Food Safety Market follow:
Website: foodsafetymarket.eu
Twitter: twitter.com/thefsmeu
Linkedin: linkedin.com/showcase/thefsmeu/

About AgroKnow
Agroknow is the food safety intelligence company that extracts tailor-made data insights for the global supply chain. Through FOODAKAI, its global food safety platform, Agroknow helps Food Safety & Quality Assurance professionals monitor & predict risks across the supply chain.

The company collects, translates and enriches global food safety data to ensure that everyone has access to safe food. Agroknow delivers its service to food safety professionals from companies among the biggest multinational food manufacturers and retailers such as: Conagra, Yili Group and Syngenta.

For more information about Agroknow, please visit: agroknow.com

About Trace Labs
Trace Labs is a blockchain company developing enterprise solutions for trusted data exchange across the supply chain. Their solutions enable forward-thinking organizations to gain the most knowledge and make better decisions based on interconnected data from their supply chains. Trace Labs is also the core development company of the open-source OriginTrail protocol for blockchain-based data exchange. Founded in 2013, Trace Labs has built award-winning enterprise solutions for supply chains, including those for traceability and verifiable claims. In 2017, Trace Labs received an award from the Walmart Food Safety Collaboration Center. Trace Labs believes sustainable supply chains are only possible when all organizations, big or small, are allowed to benefit from trusted data exchanges.

For more information about Trace Labs, please visit: tracelabs.io
For more information about OriginTrail, please visit: origintrail.io

About Trace Alliance
Trace Alliance is a EU-based non-profit association within the OriginTrail ecosystem that functions as an inclusive, collaborative hub to connect all organizations aiming to work together to solve complex supply chain challenges using blockchain technology. Examples of the challenges the alliance intends to tackle include data interoperability, supply chain transparency and fighting counterfeit practices. The Trace Alliance acts as a platform for sharing knowledge and experience from real-world blockchain implementations, allowing members to connect and pursue joint projects, creating new expertise and facilitating the adoption of blockchain technology on a global level. Existing members of the Trace Alliance include Deloitte, EVRYTHNG, TMA Solutions, Gijima, T-Provenance, Oregon Tilth, TE-FOOD, BTC Logistics Centre, and 100 + enterprises and service providers.

For more information about Trace Alliance, please visit: alliance.origintrail.io

The Food Safety Market: an SME-powered industrial data platform to boost the competitiveness of European food certification has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 871703.

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OriginTrail
OriginTrail

OriginTrail is the Decentralized Knowledge Graph that organizes AI-grade knowledge assets, making them discoverable & verifiable for sustainable global economy.