IOTA Foundation, a non-profit foundation focused on distributed ledger technology (DLT) and open-source ecosystem development, today announced a partnership with Primority, a digital food safety management company that helps food product manufacturers monitor food safety in food supply chains. The partnership includes the development of a prototype app that will allow consumers to easily check what allergens are in a food product when contemplating a purchase.
Following recent high profile allergy incidents which resulted in completely avoidable deaths and/or serious illness in children and young people, additional laws are being enacted on allergen information transparency for consumer retail products. According to a 2018 survey in Pediatrics, 20 percent of children with a food allergy required hospital care during the past year for a life-threatening reaction to food, and 42 percent said their food allergy had caused at least one previous emergency department visit.
There are many hidden allergens that may be present in food that consumers may not be aware of. This can happen for a number of reasons, including when food products share the production line with allergen containing products. While food companies have allergen control within their factories, transferring allergen information along the supply chain can be overlooked as recent events have shown.
To combat this, Primority has developed a digital ledger based consumer-focused app, integrated with its 3iVerify platform, powered by IOTA. Using information collected on Primority’s 3iVerify cloud software, the data from food manufacturers is automatically shared on IOTA’s Tangle. Accessible by scanning the barcode on the food packaging itself, a digital twin of each food product is easily reviewed by the consumer and food factories alike.
How It Works
The digital twin contains the list of allergens identified in the specific product, together with its expiration date and method of verification. Once stored into the IOTA Tangle, this information becomes immutable and its integrity is guaranteed. For consumers, the collected information can be accessed from anywhere and by anybody via the AllerSafe app. This means that for products stored on the IOTA Tangle that consumers can have confidence in the allergen information.
Food manufacturers who use 3iVerify can send data from the platform to the IOTA ledger without the need to cover the costs of managing this infrastructure. For consumers, the app accesses the IOTA ledger and the information shared on it without owning any cryptocurrency or installing a wallet.
“The motivation for this App was driven by the tragic events that occurred in the last few years resulting in the needless deaths of several people who unsuspectingly consumed products containing deadly allergens. We wanted to show that solutions for this problem exist, are low cost and can be highly effective. We looked at traditional blockchain technology, but felt that IOTA’s next generation digital ledger was a perfect solution that we could build a truly global and scalable solution on,” said James Flynn, CTO of Primority.
“The solution is a non-competitive setup whereby the entire food industry can open up their databases on allergens directly to consumers – without sharing any sensitive information to competitors. It shows the power of a permissionless ledger and how it can drive an infrastructure serving the public good. We are very excited that Primority is driving this grand vision and are looking forward to engage the industry at large,” said Jens Munch, Head of Supply Chain and Global Trade, IOTA Foundation.
About Primority
Primority Ltd is a UK based, specialist software development company focused on integrated food safety management solutions. Several of its customers are leading UK-based food manufacturers who supply products to the major retailers.
Primority’s 3iVerify cloud solution helps them with supplier and raw material compliance, monitoring and approval as well as compliance with food safety laws and global food safety standards.
Visit https://www.primority.com for more information.
About IOTA Foundation
IOTA is a global not-for-profit foundation incorporated and headquartered in Germany. The IOTA Foundation’s mission is to support the research and development of new distributed ledger technologies (DLT), including the IOTA Tangle. The Foundation encourages the education and adoption of distributed ledger technologies through the creation of ecosystems and the standardization of these new protocols.
The IOTA Tangle moves beyond blockchain by providing the world’s first scalable, feeless and fully-decentralized distributed ledger technology. The Tangle uses its own unique technology to solve three fundamental problems with blockchain technology: high fees, scaling and centralization. It is an open-source protocol connecting the human economy with the machine economy by facilitating novel Machine-to-Machine (M2M) interactions, including secure data transfer, fee-less micropayments, and secure access control for devices.
Visit www.iota.org for more information. Follow IOTA on Twitter: @iotatoken and YouTube: IOTA Foundation.
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