IBM Partnered with Raw SeaFoods to Track SeaFoods via Blockchain

IBM recently announced its partnership with Massachusetts-based company, Raw SeaFoods Inc. to prevent seafood fraud. The initiative will begin by digitizing supply chain for fresh scallops originated from the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery.

Blockchain, the technology that has proven to have a potential beyond cryptocurrencies, has entered a vast range of industries and processes. However, the one where it has shown remarkable changes is Food Supply Chain.

The technology has offered an opportunity to track food right from farm to local stores to your plate. This has helped with preventing food-related frauds and ensuring higher security in the food domain. 

However, the challenge that most of the people were facing was how to participate in this process, especially because of a wide range of technological elements involved in the supply chain.

This is where IBM came into the limelight. 

The company launch its Food Trust Blockchain platform to help various stakeholders keep a real-time record of every activity in the supply chain and combat food frauds. It underwent partnerships with various reputed companies like Nestle, Migros, DeltaTrak, Walmart, BrightFarms, and Organo to extend its services to different food categories. And this way, enhance the efficiency, security, and pace of the whole process.

And recently, it has collaborated with Raw SeaFoods to combat seafood fraud and mislabeling, starting with scallops. 

“We are always actively engaged in helping our suppliers, retailers and restaurants deliver a product that’s well above the industry standard for quality and freshness,” said Daniel McQuade, Raw Seafoods Vice President of Marketing. “With IBM Food Trust, we found the perfect tool for establishing a direct link between the consumer and the captain of the boat that caught their fish, empowering shoppers and diners to demand more from their food supply chain.”

As disclosed by the Raw SeaFood team, the seafood traceability process will start with a fleet of scallopers owned by Capt. Danny Eilertsen of New Bedford, MA, sharing data about their catches on the platform. This will enable all the distributors and retailers who are the stakeholders get familiar with when and from where the given scallops has been collected.

Besides, the platform will make it possible for the stakeholders to keep track of when the boat landed portside, when scallops are hand graded, picked, packed, and shipped to the final destination. Also, they will be able to check pictures and videos of the food products even before the boat reaches the dock. 

Whereas, when focusing on the Captains and crew, they will be able to use the data to be more strategic with their process and come up with options that customers would love.

In this way, this complete process will make it possible to keep a real-time record of the whole process and easily figure out why 80% – 90% of Americans eat less than the proposed allotment of seafood. Something that was a time-consuming, less reliable, and non-secure process with the traditional food tracking mechanisms.

“Traditionally, tracing the origin of a given food product could take days, if it was possible at all, especially for wild-caught sea scallops. By reducing that time frame to a matter of seconds, we’re able to solve three of the core consumer concerns that deter them from enjoying seafood: safety, sustainability and authenticity,” said Rajendra Rao, general manager of IBM Food Trust.

While this is one initiative in terms of seafood traceability and security, Raw SeaFoods has also planned to launch their own consumer-facing application. 

The application, being directly linked with the IBM’s Food Trust platform, will enable consumers to get the information directly from the menu or point of sale in the retail location using the power of QR code scanning.

This, as a whole, gives an impression that Raw SeaFoods – just like other partners of IBM – is also planning to enter new dimensions in the Food and Supply Chain industry. So, if you too are planning to step into or expand your food business by bringing blockchain on board, connect a reputed Blockchain development company today.

THE AUTHOR

Bhupinder Kour

Content Writer