You know, People back in 2012 often said that the blockchain had so many uses beyond just Bitcoin trading. I didn't really know what a blockchain was at the time, but since Etherium and others came out, it's clear that its uses go far beyond finance.
One of the greatest examples so far came about in 2016 when Walmart, IBM and Tsinghua University in Beijing teamed up to work on using the blockchain to ensure safety of food production.
This is big. One thing I've been frequently warning people of is that nobody is safe in China when it comes to food. Something like 50% of Chinese think there is a high risk in whatever they eat, and some surveys, around the time half a school of kids died from adulterated milk (or something, too lazy to find the source... there are so many examples), had the trust in Chinese food as low as 30%.
If you can't trust the stuff that's supposed to be keeping you alive, what can you trust??
Here are some examples just to emphasize that there is no corner of the food AND drink industry that's safe:
- Fake water - people taking used water bottles and just filling it up with dangerous, undrinkable tap water with a dirty spatula.
- Fake beer - Budweiser bottles being filled with much cheaper Tsingdao beer
- Gutter oil being scooped up and used in cooking
- Cats in shanghai being stolen, killed, put in bags hanging from the ceiling of a guy's apartment and being sold to restaurants as 'rabbit' or other exotic meat
- Fake drugs
- Opium used in restaurant chains to try to breed addicted customers
- Contaminated baby formula
- Fake beef/pork
- Expired meat sold globally
- Using the carcinogen, sodium formaldehyde sulfoxylate (CH3NaO3S) to bleach food
- Contaminated fruit (strawberries poisoned 11,000 children in Germany)
- Cardboard bread
And the list really goes on, and on. It has gotten to a point where any fake reports can be said, and people are much better off believing it, because the chances are just as high that it ain't fake.
People here in Shanghai always assumed they were safe because it's the most developed city, but the the opium, the cats and the beer, among others are all Shanghai-based scandals. Nobody is safe.
Enter the blockchain
So this is where the blockchain comes in. The technology is a fantastic, difficult to fake method of recording and keeping track of things. It's easy to tell when things have been tampered with, and it's the primary advantage in this example.
The initiative has been re-invigorated by Alibaba, the biggest and best thing to happen in China, the child of Jack Ma, the richest and most successful man in China.
Alibaba is the Amazon of China, though it's so much more. You can not only use it to buy products online, but you can use it for grocery shopping, paying bills, booking taxis, flights, trains and cinema tickets, trade in the financial market, unlock shared bikes, pay for anything. It's the primary driver of a truly cashless society that China is rapidly becoming (many people in Shanghai rarely even see actual cash anymore)
Now, the company is striving to rid the country of fake food. With a new app being experimented on in New Zealand and Australia, it can track pretty much everything:
Here you can see:
- Serial number
- The Alphanumeric code
- The farm
- What part of the cow the beef came from
- Package date
- The breed of cow and its age (Three years old)
- What the cow was fed on (corn, wheat and straw)
- The name of the vet looking after it
- When it was slaughtered
- Where it was packaged and stored
- What tests it went through to check for various contamination, bacteria etc.
- Water content
As you can see, it's really extensive. But as one expert points out:
'traceability is not a single magic-bullet to stop fraud, but it is a critical part'. Quite right. The fraudsters could simply be working within the legit supply chain and simply lie about details, which is basically how China got into this mess in the first place. But, it makes life a lot harder, and with the ability for customers to verify quality and legitimacy to the masses via the blockchain, it makes it even harder.
I'm genuinely excited for this to get off the ground. Alibaba has done nothing but amazing things for China and the world, and it's further highlighted how blockchain technology is a future we never saw coming.
Thinking about Steemit, I've seen multiple initiatives, such as using the funds to build a park, to plant trees, to help charities and those in need and so on. I wonder if steemit can bloom into something more altruistic than simply allowing people to quit their day jobs?