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Fighting E.Coli With Blockchain Technology: The U.S. FDA Is Considering New Tracking Methods

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2 weeks ago

November 28, 2018

Stefan

After an E.coli outbreak happened in the United States linked to romaine lettuce, the Food and Drug Administration is in today’s blockchain news for considering blockchain technology as a better tracing and tracking method.

FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb explained that the FDA has already hired the vice president of food safety at Walmart, Frank Yiannas and he is expected to introduce the agency with the blockchain.

Gottlieb explained:

“We have a guy starting… the former head of food safety at Walmart who is going to be coming to the FDA to help us put in place among other things better track and trace using tools like blockchain maybe to even do track-and-trace on the food supply chain.”

According to the commissioner, in the future, if a food-related outbreak is to happen, the blockchain technology will be of great help with tracking and finding the cause and the distributor, farmer or grower in the supply chain.

Before joining the FDA team, Yiannis was among the first retailers who implemented blockchain technology. Walmart gave all of the suppliers a period of one year to make sure that the system is in the right place for the new program to successfully take off.

After starting the initiative, Walmart explained that there were plenty of states in the US that suffered E.coli outbreaks that were linked to romaine lettuce and resulted in more than 100 hospitalizations and ever 5 death cases. This is why they urged the use of blockchain technology so the product origin will become available throughout the supply chain at all times.

Following the steps of Walmart, Franch Carrefour has implemented IBM’s blockchain data system known as Food Trust and also the UK joined after announcing that they are working on a blockchain project to track beef from the slaughterhouse to the end consumer.

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Related Topics:Blockchain e.coli FDA technology tracing Tracking

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Stefan

Stefan has been a Bitcoin Specialist for over 5 years. Providing daily news and updates for DC Forecasts.

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