IBM Blockchain Partners Raw Seafoods to Combat Seafood Fraud

IBM Blockchain, the enterprise blockchain arm of tech giant, IBM announced today that it has partnered with Massachusetts-based Raw Seafoods Inc, to combat widespread seafood fraud and mislabeling.

According to a press release shared with Coinfomania, the move will see global sourcing partners, retailers, and restauranteurs adopt the IBM Food Trust platform to enhance seafood traceability.

The initiative will start by digitizing the supply chain for fresh scallops sourced from the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery. 

A fleet of scallopers owned by Capt. Danny Eilertsen of New Bedford, MA, will begin uploading data about their catch onto the platform, enabling distributors and retailers to identify exactly when and where a given lot of scallops were harvested. 

The platform will also track when the boat landed port side, and when each scallop lot was hand graded, selected, packed and shipped to its final destination. 

This information, as well as images and video, is uploaded via satellite to a distributed ledger while still offshore. Once it is uploaded, this information is then available to permissioned parties, including distributors, suppliers, retailers and their customers at the point of sale. 

Commenting on the release, Daniel McQuade, Raw Seafoods VP of Marketing said:

With IBM Food Trust, we found the perfect tool for establishing a direct link between the consumer and the captain of the boat that caught their fish, empowering shoppers and diners to demand more from their food supply chain.

Similarly, Rajendra Rao, General Manager of IBM Food Trust highlighted the benefits that using blockchain to track seafood would benefit consumers. He said, 

Traditionally, tracing the origin of a given food product could take days, if it was possible at all, especially for wild-caught sea scallops. By reducing that time frame to a matter of seconds, we’re able to solve three of the core consumer concerns that deter them from enjoying seafood: safety, sustainability and authenticity.

In another update regarding IBM’s involvement with blockchain, we reported in August that the company collaborated with six other firms including Nokia to develop a blockchain-based supply chain management system to track the movement and storage of raw materials and finished goods.

Scallop Seafood Image via Pixabay