U.S. National Pork Board partners with ripe.io to pilot blockchain technology

The National Pork Board has entered into a partnership with blockchain startup ripe.io to pilot blockchain use in the U.S. pork industry.

The National Pork Board is a program sponsored by the United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Marketing Service. It aims to develop and expand markets for pork and pork products.

Under the partnership, ripe.io will enable an ecosystem in which pork producers would be able to monitor, evaluate and continuously improve their sustainability practices based on the We Care framework.

Launched in 2008, the We Care framework includes six ethical principles which guide the U.S. pork industry. These principles provide industry standards in food safety and public health, animal well-being, protecting the environment, and improving the quality of life for the industry's people and communities.

"Over the last 50 years, America's pig farmers have followed the We Care principles to produce a product that has become increasingly sustainable using 75 percent less land, 25 percent less water, and 7 percent less energy," said Dr. Brett Kaysen, assistant vice president of sustainability at the National Pork Board.

"We look forward to working with ripe.io to use blockchain technology to record proof points through a system that can benchmark performance while increasing transparency of the entire pork value chain."

Through the pilot project, the National Pork Board aims to demonstrate to its producers the value of having a responsible supply chain by consolidating sustainability data and activities gathered on the ripe.io platform.

The platform will highlight how pork producers create a sustainable pork production environment. The distributed permissioned ledger will allow ecosystem partners to view the program data to ensure valid certifications. The data remains anonymous in order to create a benchmark indicator for each ethical principle.

"Through blockchain, customers like the National Pork Board can enable its organization and members to create shared, immutable trusted records that address critical food issues such as sustainability, quality, traceability, waste and fraud,” said Raja Ramachandran, co-founder of ripe.io.