With the passage of the Food Safety and Modernization Act (FSMA) comes the final rules on the Sanitary Transportation of Human and Animal Foods. Combined with the FSMA Preventive Control rules designed to establish food safety requirements throughout the food supply chain, serious documentation challenges face the food logistics sector.
Food distribution is increasingly complex. Given the types of food safety hazards depicted as global food hazards over the past 10 years, food shippers, carriers, and receivers have been placed in the food safety bull’s eye. Food safety supply chain controls, preventive controls, and transportation rules provide a focus that leaves logistics in an unenviable position. No company will escape blame due to the range of shared liability established by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rules.
By networking the supply chain players and connecting the various entities through shared access to financial, food safety, movement, traceability, and other data, a complete real-time view of the status of the food during logistical processes becomes possible.
With many supplier-customer relationships now requiring access to food safety data and with a growing number of companies moving to blockchain distributed ledger systems, the stage is set for combining food safety data (throughout the entire food supply chain) with a financial and legal (chain-of-custody) trail that moves vicarious liability into the forefront. By integrating financial, traceability, and food safety data into a single blockchain system, looking for probable causes based on calculable outbreak risk levels allows companies to quickly track back to recall origins.
The potential for consumer and company financial protection is enormous.
Indeed, major players are already in the game: IBM, Walmart, Port of Rotterdam, Kroger, Unilever, Nestle, Dole, McCormick and Company, McLane Company, Driscoll, Tyson Foods, Golden State Foods, and even the government of Haiti are in play.
Source: foodsafetymagazine.com