Improving Food Safety and Security via Blockchain Technology to Track Tanker Washes and Commodity History for Liquid Food Grade and Dairy Industries

In July of 2020, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published the "New Era for Smarter Food Safety Blueprint". The first of four core elements included in that document is Tech-enabled Traceability. In the document, the FDA acknowledges that tracing food through the supply chain is largely paper based. The FDA goes on to recommend standardization of critical tracking events and key data elements, ways to achieve interoperability, and promote industry adoption by creating financial incentives (among others).Freight logistics industry groups have talked about using blockchain to digitally transform the tracking of chain of custody for years. While some groups of customers have made strides in this area, the tracking of containers used to carry food-grade products has remained decidedly on paper. The paper tracking process has several flaws including paper copies are easily lost, or destroyed, or simply not easily retrievable by outside parties in a distributed system. A history of a transport container may not be easily retrieved or verified by auditors, who may have to spend a day or days on site for certain certifications and are not easily searchable in the case of an outbreak of foodborne illness. Blockchains provide the possibility of controlling product storage quality during transportation and guaranteeing the origin of products, thereby creating trust among suppliers. Quality control is a key supply chain management application of blockchain technology, which is a key end user benefit of the technology we are proposing to develop.A blockchain based distributed ledger system with a central registry would allow for the persistence of the history of loads and cleaning events (critical events) to be stored in a verifiable digital format. The ledger system can be updated by a distributed set of agents (wash stations, loading facilities) and submitted to a central registry, which can then be used to generate automated reports for audits (e.g. Kosher, USDA, Dept of Transportation (DOT). Development of a central registry enables searching of data on loads during foodborne illness-related emergencies and can be more easily integrated with regulatory systems as called for in the FDA blueprint.The technical challenges this proposal aims to address is that a blockchain/distributed ledger system (as with any other database) needs to adequately model the process and must capture critical events and key data elements. The overall goal of this proposed Phase I SBIR is to prove that it is feasible to adequately model the process within a blockchain-based distributed ledger system and to implement it on hardware common to the trucking industry. Specifically, HL's Phase I objectives include:Objective 1: Select a block chain/distributed ledger system and model the workflow of transactions in the distributed ledger systemObjective 2: Prototype a mobile app or functional wireframe that implements the workflow from Objective 1Objective 3: Test the proof of concept workflow in a commercial setting to validate contributions to food safety and certification (10-20 trailers for 8 weeks across 2 or more facilities).In addition, Hagen Logistics will perform an end of test interview with each of the drivers and facility operators to record qualitative feedback on the app's proposed operation. Results will be compared against the technical questions posed; outcomes will be compiled into a feasibility report and used to inform the scope of a follow-on Phase II proposal.