How blockchain unfolds credibility factor in food safety

On every customer call that I go, I am asked the following two questions,

1.??????What if I enter the wrong data into the system and tell the world it as organics and genuine?

2.??????Why blockchain?

In this post I have tried to answer these two questions in layman terms. For a moment, let’s forget about the traceability, blockchain and everything else and start fresh with the things we know.

Twitter has more than 70 million fake accounts and Instagram has over 95 million fake accounts. Another social media platform, LinkedIn, had nearly 20 million fake accounts in total.

The onboarding process for all three social media platforms is same, you just need an email ID and phone number. Yet, LinkedIn has very few fake accounts compared to others. How does LinkedIn ensure that fake IDs are not encouraged on the platform?

What do we see when we visit a twitter or Instagram profile? Name, bio and their tweets or posts.

Things get interesting in LinkedIn when we see their personal details. The school that they studied, the year of graduation, organizations they have worked for and the current organization. This information builds a layer of trust to other users. Anyone who graduated from the same batch and same college will identify that he/she studied at Harvard. By adding personal information, LinkedIn is building a level of transparency for a profile.

It gets more interesting when people interact with each other. Giving recommendation, endorsing for skills. This is another level of credibility to the profile.

We have two profiles. The first one is Mike Ross, and his bio says:

·????????Associate at Pearson Spectre.

·????????Graduated from Harvard Business School, with 9 GPA in 2010.

The second profile is of Harvey Spectre:

·????????Named partner at Pearson Spectre

·????????Graduated from Harvard Business School, with 9 GPA in 2002. (Harvard Certificate attached)

·????????Has 50+ endorsements for Closing, Negotiation and Bullying.

·????????11 recommendations from his classmates at Harvard and colleagues.

Whose profile do you think would look more genuine? Obviously, Harvey’s.

Peer to peer endorsements and certifications sharing build credibility when we see a profile. It is lot easier to verify these fake accounts on LinkedIn and proactive measure the platform takes to curb fake accounts. Thus, LinkedIn has largely eliminated the problem of fake accounts.

Coming back to all the claims that food manufacturers make. How do we verify the claims are genuine?

1.??????Establish a farm to fork traceability for the product. This adds a layer of credibility.

2.??????Ensure that all participants of the supply chain are connected.

3.??????Peer to peer endorsements.

4.??????Add certifications and lab testing reports, independently by a 3rd party agency.

This can largely eliminate foul players in the market.

Why blockchain?

When the data is handled by multiple participants, there are chances of one of the participants tweaking the data. We want participants to add truthful and verifiable information on the pre-existing layer.

Blockchain being immutable, ensures that the original information is passed at each stage. Blockchain smart contracts will help the platform to monitor frauds by keeping strong checks and balances. Thus, detecting and eliminating false claims.