The first 5G+ blockchain traceability platform landed, and a century-old multinational company Cargill took the lead in testing water?

On June 21st, the “Technology Innovation and Empowerment Agriculture Future” seminar and strategic cooperation conference hosted by the National Animal Health and Food Safety Innovation Alliance was held in the Ministry of Agriculture.

This seminar is based on the theme of “5G+ blockchain to assist agricultural technology development”. It aims to explore the next-generation information technology such as blockchain, 5G, edge computing, Internet of Things, and data intelligence for the animal source food supply chain, especially The key links of animal husbandry, slaughtering and processing are traced through the whole process, innovative food quality supervision ideas, food safety, and intelligent agricultural ecology are created to promote the high-quality development of agriculture.

The National Animal Health and Food Safety Innovation Alliance established the Science and Technology Innovation and Empowerment Committee, and signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the New Generation Information Technology Research Institute of Beijing University and Zhiyuan Wanyuan (Beijing) Digital Technology Co., Ltd. to jointly build a trust food traceability platform.

Background | Frequent food safety issues, how to restore consumer confidence?

African swine fever, lean meat, fake vaccine, mad cow disease, tainted milk powder… These food problems are frequent, and the complicated food safety situation is an important issue before us.

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According to the relevant information of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce and the State Administration of Taxation, there are hundreds of thousands of fake and fraudulent enterprises in China each year, involving 15 economic fields and more than 2,600 brands. The annual economic loss is as high as 300 billion.

General Secretary Xi Jinping put forward the "four most stringent" requirements of "the most stringent standards, the most stringent supervision, the most severe punishment, and the most serious accountability", in order to ensure the "safety on the tongue" of the broad masses of the people.

Based on this, the construction of the traceability system is extremely urgent. However, China's traceability industry is still in its infancy. Taking the traceability platform of the Agricultural Bureau of the Ministry of Agriculture as an example, the traceability of agricultural products is less than 1%, far lower than that of developed countries.

At the press conference, Director Xu Guanhua of the Agricultural Products Quality and Safety Supervision Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said: "We are promoting the revision of the Agricultural Product Quality and Safety Law. We have already proposed to the relevant state ministries and commissions to establish mandatory traceability. Animal products are definitely a priority because Meat, eggs, and milk are the biggest consumers."

Director Yang Hongjie of the National Animal Husbandry Station also shared two examples of personal experience.

The first is African swine fever.

Our country's pig industry is facing a hundred years of change, an African piglet, which has caused a fatal blow to our pig industry. There are several characteristics of African swine fever, the virus is large, the protein structure is rich, the variation is very fast, there is no vaccine at present, and it is resistant to low temperature and can survive for a thousand days in frozen pork.

48% of the world's pigs are raised in China. Currently, 63% of the meat consumption of ordinary people comes from pork. Due to African swine fever, our pork supply has dropped by about 20%. However, everyone did not feel the tension of pork. There are two reasons. First, it is now in the off-season of pork consumption. Second, the confidence of our consumers has been frustrated and the consumption of pork has been reduced.

How do we give consumers confidence? How to protect consumers' food safety? This is an important topic before us.

The second is dairy products.

According to incomplete statistics, the import volume of our dairy products has increased year by year, and the proportion of domestic dairy products is decreasing. We buy baby milk powder, first think of Australia, Germany, the Netherlands. Not only baby milk powder, but also fresh milk.

In fact, among all our livestock products, dairy products should be the most stringent, the most confident and most reliable. There is no problem with dairy products in our country, but in the hearts of ordinary people, after the melamine incident, they have not trusted the industry.

"So can we trace the food safety through blockchain technology, regain the confidence of our consumers, and ultimately benefit our industry, I have great expectations." Director Yang Hongjie concluded.

Practice | The credibility of the traceability platform launched, a century of enterprise has been applied?

The National Animal Health and Food Safety Innovation Alliance under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural China launched the first domestic food chain alliance-level food trust traceability platform based on blockchain + 5G technology. With the aim of “providing consumers with safe, high-quality and healthy animal-derived food”, we will focus on solving major technical problems and bottlenecks involved in food safety in the whole industry chain.

Director of the Center for Financial Technology of Peking University Research Institute and CEO of Zhixing Wanyuan (Beijing) Digital Technology Co., Ltd. Dong Ning, as the platform contractor, introduced the construction of the National Animal Health and Food Safety Innovation Alliance Food Trust Traceability Platform.

On the platform, on the one hand, enterprises can obtain visualization data from the whole industry chain such as breeding, processing, logistics, etc., which data can be selected for other enterprises or consumers to view; on the other hand, consumers can scan the package. QR code or RFID trace source to view product information of interest at any time. Relying on the blockchain and other technologies and alliance platforms, through real-time monitoring and recording of all processes of the product, the retroactive efficiency can be optimized, and the overall industrial chain can be traced and managed.

Cargill Animal Protein (Anhui) Co., Ltd. became the first company to settle in the platform. Founded in 1865, Cargill is a diversified multinational conglomerate that combines food, agricultural, financial and industrial products and services. It operates in 68 countries and employs more than 155,000 people.

At the meeting, Cargill representative Xie Zhixin showed “No anti-broiler products” on the spot, letting the participants scan the code experience, and querying the photos of breeding, processing environment, chick information, veterinary drug use, time and temperature through the global unique encrypted ID number. Such as the rich data on the chain.

In addition, Carrefour, Metro, Baisheng Group, New Hope, Zhongmu Group and other internationally renowned food companies have also expressed their hopes for product traceability based on blockchain technology and transparent management of the entire process.

Puzzles | Complementing the shortcomings of the real board and the consumption upgrade of large enterprises, 3 problems to be solved

Traceability is one of the earliest and effective application scenarios of blockchain. Many head food companies are actively deploying them. The relevant leaders of the Ministry of Agriculture also expressed their encouragement and optimism. But even so, there are still some challenges.

First of all, the content of this conference is devoted to the use of new technologies such as 5G and blockchain to enable food traceability. However, the actual situation is that the level of agricultural production and management in our country is still at a relatively early stage. In particular, we still have hundreds of millions of small farmers who have not yet fully informatized and how to use blockchain technology. What?

Director Xu Guanhua of the Agricultural Products Quality and Safety Supervision Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said that how to combine the blockchain technology with the current development status is the key.

"From the national conditions, our first thought is to use the certificate, whether it is a multinational group, a large-scale enterprise, or a small farmer. As long as you sell agricultural products, the most basic requirement is to have a certificate of edible agricultural products. On the basis of the certificate, For the simplest traceability, the mobile APP is registered with one button, and the QR code is generated by the Bluetooth micro-printer, which may be more suitable for the national conditions.

Of course, for large enterprises, due to different levels of development, traceability methods can also be varied. If it is a three-product standard agricultural product certification, then it needs blockchain technology. For example, where is the production of some veterinary drugs, where does the hidden additive come from? What is the purchase channel? If comprehensive information is realized, these can be recorded in detail according to the requirements of the blockchain to prevent illegal activities. ” The attempt to apply blockchain technology in the field of traceability has been nearly two years old. 5G's assistance to agricultural products is at the stage of staying in the air. The 5G license has just been released, and the base station has not been rolled out. The specific application scenario is even more unknown.

What are the appeals of the animal source food supply chain that need 5G to achieve? At the meeting, Liu Peng, a researcher at the China Mobile Research Institute, raised such questions. Sun Zhongchao, deputy secretary general of the National Alliance for Animal Health and Food Safety, said: "At least one scenario is imaginable. After the African swine fever epidemic, the park will be isolated and it will be very difficult for outside veterinarians to enter. In this case Is it possible to rely on 5G networks for video consultation?" Liu Peng said that under the 5G network, MR (mixed reality) technology can indeed get better applications, but the current attempt based on this has not yet entered the industry. Stage.

Second, the relevant leaders of the Ministry of Agriculture are more concerned about food safety issues, such as African swine fever, melamine, and hope to supplement the shortcomings with advanced technology. And several business representatives, such as Cargill and Carrefour, are excellent enterprises in the industry. What they want to do is to promote consumption upgrades with advanced technology. It can be seen that there is asymmetry between the government and enterprises. As an alliance organization that connects governments and enterprises, how should we deal with the inconsistency between them? How to promote the development of the industry?

In response to the question raised by Babbitt, Sun Zhongchao, deputy secretary general of the National Alliance for Animal Health and Food Safety, said:

"Because the alliance includes various enterprises in the upstream and downstream, from breeding, slaughtering to commercial super, that is to say, what kind of materials are used for pigs, cattle, sheep and poultry, what medicine is used, how to breed, how to transport, how to slaughter, how to carry out food processing. Until the sale of Shangchao and catering enterprises, this is an entire industrial chain. Our platform will be used for the three parties in the future.

The first one is the regulator. We will open the relevant data to the regulators. They are very concerned about the anti-counterfeiting and fraud of the products.

The second is for the B-end, such as Cargill, who supplies McDonald's and Parkson. How do they purchase? Cargill is sure to open this part of the data.

The third is the consumer, after the consumer scans the code, they will see some basic data. I believe that through the platform of the alliance and the access of the three parties, one by one, the future should be able to do something to promote the development of the industry. ” Finally, according to Babbitt, the food traceability platform is actually a toB product. From the operational point of view, it may be that the food production, processing, and sales companies themselves will put the data on the chain. From the business model, the platform revenue should be Also from food companies, charge technical service fees and operating expenses. Therefore, the interests of the platform technical supporters and the merchants are actually the same, so how to win the trust of consumers?

Moreover, this time as a case show, Cargill is actually a large company with a full industrial chain, including the entire process of farming, processing and transportation. Their own informationization is relatively sound and the data is relatively perfect. The credibility brought by the blockchain is mainly based on “certificate of deposit” rather than “traceability”. After the consumer scans the code, the data provided by the single enterprise is obtained. How to ensure the authenticity of the data in the process of the chain? This is a question that the blockchain has long been to be solved in the field of traceability.

Of course, the current progress can not be said to be meaningless, because it is equivalent to a pre-action, often the enterprise will cover and tamper with some data after the accident, and based on the way the blockchain uploads data in real time, To a certain extent, it avoids the possibility of enterprises doing evil. However, in the future, it may be necessary to cooperate with the IoT sensing device to allow data to be uploaded through the machine rather than manually, further enhancing the credibility of the uplink data.

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