Carrefour, a global retailer and leader in food traceability through the gradual application of  blockchain technology to its Carrefour Quality Line products, has joined other participants  involved in building the IBM Food Trust platform.

The objective of the collaboration between Carrefour and IBM Food Trust is to implement a global food traceability standard across all of the links in the chain – from producers through to sales channels.

IBM Food Trust uses blockchain technology to create visibility and accountability in the food supply chain. It is the only network of its kind, connecting growers, processors, distributors, and retailers through a permissioned, permanent and shared record of food system data.

Blockchain technology makes it easier to record events along the supply, processing, packaging and distribution chain.

Through this collaborative network set up between manufacturers and distributors, essential product safety information that benefits consumers can be shared, notably: traceability information about product origin and quality; information about the nutritional properties of products and the potential presence of any allergens or questionable substances; traceability shared across the whole supply chain in the event of a product recall, a health issue or non-compliance with specifications or a particular label.

"Consumers want more and more transparency regarding the products they eat," says Cosme de Moucheron, IBM’s MD in charge of Carrefour group. "Thats why members of the IBM Food Trust ecosystem are co-developing a new solution – so that all of the parties involved in the supply chain can guarantee product traceability and quality. We are delighted that Carrefour is joining the group of founder members behind this initiative so it can play an active role in extending it throughout Europe and the rest of the world."

The members of IBM Food Trust, including Carrefour, help ensure that the information that reaches consumers is reliable, and transparent. In concrete terms, this means that Carrefours development teams and IBM Food Trusts partners are going to work closely together to: Share their know-how; Create a knock-on effect among Carrefour group suppliers; Provide consumers with guarantees about product origin and quality.

This collaboration is one of the key initiatives making up Carrefours global food transition program – Act for Food –, speeding up the application of blockchain technology to new product ranges over the next few months.

"Being a founding member of IBM Food Trust platform is a great opportunity for Carrefour to strongly accelerate and widen the integration of blockchain technology to our products in order to provide our clients with safe and undoubted traceability,” said Laurent Vallée, Carrefour Group’s general secretary. “This is a decisive step in the roll-out of Act for Food, our global program of concrete initiatives in favour of the food transition.”