The food industry rarely uses integrated systems to pass information throughout the supply chain. As a result, companies are hardly able to adequately comply with all traceability requirements that go beyond the legal ones. In the past, this has meant that identifying the root cause of contamination has taken a long time, resulting in a hazard remaining for a long time. The identification of the cause, as well as the collection and isolation of the contaminated food in the trade and the worldwide distribution area, are very costly.

As part of the project, the consortium of institutions from science and industry is investigating the extent to which security and transparency in food supply chains can be increased by applying blockchain technology. The aim is to enable clear traceability while at the same time ensuring that the information cannot be falsified.

The application of blockchain technology enables the creation of a decentralized, digital and tamper-proof network. In this network, all participating actors can write data to store transactions chronologically and immutably. In addition, this data can be read according to access authorizations. The university's sub-project is essentially divided into two objectives:
1. The systematic definition of requirements from the perspective of the main actors and institutions involved in the food supply chain from a food science and food law perspective ("from farm to fridge").
2. testing and validation of the results developed in the research project for practical suitability in cooperation with representative application partners.

The initial approach in the project is to ascertain the user-side requirements of the industry, the authorities and the consumer. The focus here is on the scope of the release and the desired confidentiality of company-related data. The university leads and coordinates this initial requirements elicitation work package and prepares a requirements specification based on all collected results. This requirement specification includes a developed logistical reference model, the data needs from different perspectives, and the technical and non-technical requirements for the blockchain solution.

Based on this, a model of a blockchain-based overall architecture (reference supply chain) is designed (requirements specification). Based on this, a blockchain network is implemented for the specific use case. Developed SiLKe applications should enable users to visualize and analyze their data.

The blockchain is validated with the help of two concrete use cases in order to be able to ensure reliable functionality of the blockchain solution and thus guarantee transferability to a wide variety of food commodity groups. For this purpose, the relevant products or product groups are first identified and the material flows along the supply chain are described. Finally, the demonstrator created illustrates the solutions developed on the basis of blockchain technology to the user.

Thume et. al (2022): Blockchain-based traceability in food supply chains; September 2022.

Research poster SiLKe - Secure food chain through application of blockchain technology; April 2021.

Blockchain-based traceability in the food industry: requirements analysis along the food supply chain;March 2021

SiLKe enables transparent supply chains via blockchain technology (Lebensmittelzeitung; available via library access "wiso"); January 2021

Blockchain to secure food supply chains; April 2020.

Traceability through blockchain; February 2020