IOTA, Primority to develop smartphone app to track potentially fatal food allergens using blockchain

Non-profit blockchain organization IOTA Foundation has partnered with UK-based digital food safety management company Primority to use blockchain to monitor food safety in the food supply chain and track food allergens.

As per a blog post, the collaboration will involve the development of a prototype smartphone application that would allow customers to check food products for allergens, including instances when different foods share the same production line.

The data will be stored on IOTA’s immutable distributed ledger protocol Tangle and incorporated in Primority’s 3iVerify platform, allowing collected information from manufacturers to be shared on IOTA’s Tangle.

By simply scanning a barcode on the AllergensCheck app, customers can get shared details about food products including tracing the raw materials used and their suppliers and reviewing food production processes. The advantage is that the process is all possible without requiring customers to share sensitive data or even owning any cryptocurrencies.

“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,” Jens Munch, IOTA Foundation Head of Supply Chain and Global Trade, said.

According to IOTA’s tweet, the initiative aims to lessen the threat of these potentially fatal food allergens, targeting 220 million people living with food allergy across the world.

Recently, blockchain companies R3 and ripe.io have collaborated to enhance transparency and trust in food and agriculture supply chains through digitization and enterprise adoption of blockchain.