There are no contaminants in our oil!
That’s a message that food maker CHO wants to get across while shipping its Mediterranean olive oil worldwide.
Breaking news by Cointelegraph contributor Rachel Wolfson reveals that CHO is due to use IBM’s food tracking blockchain technology to trace its Terra Delyssa brand extra virgin olive oil from the tree to the customer.
IBM Blockchain Supply Chain Solutions VP Ramesh Gopinath describes the system as “creating a verifiable record of where each bottle of CHO olive oil was produced, along with keeping track of the methods used.”
“The best part of the IBM Food Trust network is its ability to connect members of the supply chain together, like the end consumer with the farmer.” Gopinath said, according to Wolfson’s reporting. “CHO has done just this, as every entity involved can share data, which not only provides traceability and food information, but also shows where food trust is heading in general.”
The olive oil in question is harvested by Tunisian farmers and hits store shelves in the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Denmark and Japan by March.
As Wolfson’s article points out, the olive oil industry is rife with fraud and deception. Reports of extra virgin olive oil containing rancid contaminants and even foreign substances are all over the Internet. That’s a particular reason to utilize IBM’s new food tracking project for this particular use case.
“Tests performed by the National Consumers League in 2015 and 2019 show that half of all olive oils found on store shelves contained misleading labels, going beyond issues relating to flavor profiles,” Wolfson writes, quoting Sally Greenberg, CEO of the National Consumers League, this way:
“You can’t be sure unless you’re a very well informed consumer that a bottle labeled ‘extra virgin olive oil’ is actually that very high quality … The value of having extra virgin olive oil is that it’s actually good for you. It has some very specific healthful properties that are positive for consumers and their families. So you lose out on those. You lose out on the good flavor that you get from really wonderful extra virgin olive oil. And you pay top dollar for substandard olive oil.”
CHO’s use of IBM’s blockchain system can, as Wolfson writes, bring customers “peace of mind” in an industry that has, to date, tended to be pretty sketchy. Follow us for more news on use cases for this kind of blockchain initiative.
