FDA Blueprint for a New Era of Smarter Food Safety

Blockchain and the FDA’s Blueprint for a New Era of Smarter Food Safety

On July 13, 2020 the FDA published its blueprint for a New Era of Smarter Food Safety. The plan calls for using technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence to reduce food waste, prevent foodborne illness, and track contaminated food to its source.

The agency had planned to unveil the blueprint in March, but COVID-19 delayed its release. According to FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn: “In the months that have followed, it has become even clearer . . . just how essential the actions outlined in this blueprint are and, if anything, that they are more important now, than ever.”

The pandemic highlighted weak points in existing food infrastructure that contributed to retail shortages and regional surpluses resulting in spoilage and crop destruction. Meanwhile, increased reliance on direct-to-consumer food delivery raised concerns about food preservation and contamination during transit. Prior to the pandemic, Americans suffered from numerous outbreaks of foodborne illness linked to contaminated meat, eggs, and produce. A smarter food supply chain could reduce these risks.

The FDA’s blueprint builds on the agency’s ongoing efforts to implement the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) of 2011, which was designed to shift the focus of the U.S. food safety system from responding to foodborne illness to preventing it. A key to prevention is tracking, and the FDA identifies the lack of traceability as the Achilles heel of the U.S. food system.

Currently, tracking data remains largely paper based with “insufficient data identifying the product along the supply chain” making it impossible to rapidly track and trace. Following an outbreak of foodborne illness, it could take hours or days to identify the source. The agency believes blockchain can help reduce that time to minutes or seconds, and its blueprint draws inspiration from real-time tracking of aircraft, ride sharing vehicles, and delivery trucks used by companies like FedEx, Uber, and Amazon.

At this stage, the blueprint should be viewed as a roadmap for the next decade of food safety regulation. The FDA has engaged in no formal rulemaking and offered no concrete guidance to industry. However, it will involve technology companies in the design and implementation of the new era of smarter food safety. It appears that once rules are implemented, compliance will be voluntary, and the blueprint calls for innovative ways to incentivize participation.

Some tech companies already have significant experience using blockchain to track products in the food supply. In 2018, IBM launched its blockchain-based Food Trust platform. Early adopters included Nestle, Dole, Tyson Foods, Unilever, Kroger, and French retailer Carrefour. IBM’s network is built on the Hyperledger Fabric, a “permissioned” distributed ledger platform that is compatible with GS1, a global standard for business communication, which includes bar codes commonly used to identify products.

The Hyperledger Fabric is part of a larger set of open source tools created by the Linux Foundation with help from IBM an Intel. It is unclear whether the FDA’s platform will utilize Hyperledger or similar open-source tools. However, the blueprint identifies compatibility with GS1 and other international standards as priorities.

According to Frank Yiannas, Deputy FDA Commissioner for Food Policy and Response, blockchain “has enabled food system stakeholders to imagine being able to have full end-to-end traceability. An ability to deliver accurate, real-time information about food, how it’s produced, and how it flows from farm to table is a game-changer for food safety.”