Blockchain and GS1 Standards in the Food Chain: A Review of the Possibilities and Challenges

The globalization of food systems has engendered significant changes to the operation and structure of food supply chains (FSCs). Alongside increasing consumer demands for safe and sustainable food products, FSCs are challenged with issues related to information transparency and consumer trust. Uncertainty in matters of transparency and trust arises from the growing information asymmetry between food producers and food consumers. In particular: how and where food is cultivated, harvested, processed, and under what conditions. FSCs are tasked with guaranteeing the highest standards in food quality and food safety-ensuring the use of safe and authentic ingredients, limiting product perishability, and mitigating the risk of opportunism such as quality cheating or falsification of information. A sustainable, food-secure world will require multidirectional sharing of information and enhanced information symmetry between food producers and food consumers. The need for information symmetry will drive transformational changes in FSCs methods of practice and will require a coherent standardized framework of best practice recommendations to manage logistic units in the food chain A standardized framework will enhance food traceability, drive FSC efficiencies, enable data interoperability, improve data governance practices, and set supply chain identification standards for products and assets (what), exchange parties (who), locations (where), business processes (why) and sequence (when). FSCs began to adopt industry-driven supply chain standards in 1974 when the first barcode was scanned at a point-of-sale at Marsh's Supermarket in Troy, Ohio. However, the adoption of standards alone will not adequately address the challenges created by the information asymmetry between food producers and food consumers. Therefore, this paper examines the integration of GS1 standards with the functional components of Blockchain technology as an approach to realize a coherent standardized framework of industry-based tools for successful FSC transformation.