Blockchain could fix a key problem in China’s food industry

I can't see how this is a solution. The problem isn't whether corruption is possible, the problem is trust. It's a social problem, not a technical problem. You can have the most corruption-free system in the world, but normal people won't understand how it works, nor will they care to verify the system. They get their trust through their social circle, e.g. "my mother and my friends say X is reliable while Y is untrustworthy". The more people that they trust they hear it from, repeatedly, the more they view X as reliable. The blockchain has no such reputation except possibly among certain techies, which is a tiny portion of the population.

The blockchain may allow a group of experts to verify truth, but this only impacts the population at large if somehow the opinions of these experts propagate to the larger population. That step is a marketing and communication problem.

For example Nutricia, the company behind the Dutch Nutrilon milk powder that Chinese are buying en masse, opened factories in China and sold Nutrilon directly in China. They've been doing this for several years now, yet demand for Nutrilon produced in the Netherlands remains high. Why? Because people don't trust that the Nutrilon produced in China is not a scam. Only after mass marketing campaigns, e.g. hiring celebrities as spokespeople, are people beginning to trust it.

There is a robust meat certification process in the UK. Every piece of meat sold has to be able to be traced back to the cow it came from.

The system is centralized, and has many systems in place to stop tampering.

Yet..

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_horse_meat_scandal

This is the issue, the block chain stops tampering, but does nothing at all to make sure the data entered into it is valid in any way shape or form.

You are targeting the wrong problem.

I don't get it.

Who are the participants in the blockchain and how do you ensure it cannot be tampered with i.e. could someone just go back to a previous block and rewrite history. Difficult admittedly. I don't understand what a consensus means in this implementation.

Also, it sounds like the trust is completely in the hands of one entity i.e. the person who adds details about the cow and cut of meat. How is that trustworthy ?

Either, the article doesn't explain how blockchain could fix a key problem in China's food industry, or it doesn't fix a key problem.

In my opinion food safety has to be regulated by a central agency like a Government. A decentral system like Blockchain isn't what solves the problem. Regulations and process are.

As many mention, the system is not infallible because data entry is as safe as those who control the input of it; it does not increase trust directly. However, what it does add directly is accountability. If each process, is suppose, transmitted automatically by NFC bundled crates through the supply chain, you have a guarantee of the process through the checkpoints (even if it may deviate) with the information and status of each crate, all the way to the store. More so, with the variety of information, such as average supply times, it becomes very difficult to defraud the next check in the supply chain. In addition, with the transparency of the blockchain the store can better determine the integrity of the entire process, as the actors now begin to approach perfect information. Further, now to defraud, becomes much more expensive as an effect of the checkpoints and metadata; this should further discourage defrauding.

Even better, with all this accountability, the system does becomes more trustable; the integrity of each actor is known and can be investigated independently (i.e. stores and consumers can choose which supply chain they want to be apart of because of this transparent blockchain). Not to forget, that with accountability becomes increased shared liability that then aligns each actor in the supply chain further to constantly check the integrity of the actors involved––or at least press the risk of an integrity inquiry.

Why blockchain doesn't solve the actual problem: you literally need human inspectors who know the scams. https://twitter.com/a_ferron/status/896795477844389888

This is just a bad "but with blockchain!!" puff piece. You would probably believe how many of these I read ... It's "here's a problem!" (problem may or may not exist) "Blockchain will solve it!!" (it won't even if it does exist)

Note that nothing about the actual problem is automatable - it's not about tagging the items, it's about the quality for humans of the tagged items. The blockchain approach relies on the assumption that the current crooks will suddenly tell the truth when they're entering data into the system, rather than e.g. lying, or bribing inspectors, like they do now.

The only thing that actually works is to (a) give a hoot (an important prerequisite) (b) directly inspect your suppliers.

e.g. Provenance Inc. is trying to sell this stuff in the UK, but is getting very little traction, because putting it on a blockchain doesn't solve any of the actual problem, and their prospective customers (the people in the middle and end of the supply chains) are going "what on earth, this doesn't solve any problem we have."

I wrote a book chapter on this ...

I run a foodtech startup in China - http://infinite-food.com/ - and previously designed a major cryptocurrency exchange.

What's the state of the market? If you read, for example, the last annual general report of Yum! Brands (who run KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and some other chains in China + have EBITDA ~USD$0.5B/year+) they basically say "yeah, supply quality issues happen, but basically we can't prevent them even if we spend up big, so we just do periodic inspections, value win-win long term relationships with suppliers, and have reasonable levels of paranoia". That's the reality... and they have more money and lawyers to throw at the problem than the rest of us.

On the consumer side, they want to know there's low to no pesticide residue on their veggies and that the meat they're eating is free of hormones and is what it's supposed to be, but that's not something Blockchain necessarily has anything to do with as it actually needs a fairly constrictive government or private sector testing regimen which will cost money and (under user pays) will rapidly be ignored and sidestepped by the bulk of the market. The reality is that consumers can buy organic vegetables and imported meat already: they just don't because it costs more.

IMHO then, in the Chinese market this sort of stuff realistically most probably falls in to the 'marketing gimmick to make my brand appear more trustworthy' category ... and is likely quite effective.

Don't get it?

How is it different to a central body with one database where you lookup if this product has passed all the checks / tells you its lifetime info?

What problem can it help with?

I wonder if they've experimented with image analysis software to categorise the carcass at the slaughterhouse. It's done in Ireland to good effect[1] to grade the carcass to ensure compliance with the European beef grading system (beef and dairy farming is an important industry in Ireland). It doesn't guarantee fraud prevention, but it could increase consumer confidence in beef quality.

[1] https://www.agriculture.gov.ie/farmingsectors/beef/eubeefcar...

So...I'm not sure how this will stop the fraud.

All someone has to do is payoff a data entry clerk to generate the false backstory and data that is encrypted in the blockchain. In fact, once this illegitimate data is preserved in the blockchain it will be given equal weight (or at least it should) as other legitimately generated data unless you have a way to dispute the data stored in the blockchain -- which then means you now have a more authoritative source so why do we need the blockchain

This sound like just another case of misunderstanding the core technology. I can recommend watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMEOKDVXlUo

probably should rtfa, but all china needs to do is bring back corporal punishment en masse for those that take lives or sicken others for profit, blockchains or hyper ledgers with group verification doesnt help.

So... are there people mining CowCoin to make this all work?

Blockchain could fix a key problem in X