Now eat blockchain.
China has a fake food problem. Counterfeit soy sauce, rice, and eggs are among the potentially deadly items found for sale. Now Alibaba, the nation’s top online shopping company, wants to fight back against fake foods by using blockchain, the tech behind Bitcoin.
Jack Ma’s US$270 billion ecommerce firm today announced it’s going to begin experimenting with blockchain, a digital ledger system that’s a sort of giant global spreadsheet, to track genuine food products through the supply chain. The idea is that the vendors on Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall, marketplaces with a collective 443 million active shoppers, will be able to verify the authenticity of the item using this system, thereby squeezing out the dangerous fakes.
The blockchain system will be piloted in Australia and New Zealand, two popular sources of food products for Alibaba’s Chinese customers.
Alibaba founder and chairman Jack Ma enjoys a non-fake and apparently tasty apple. Photo credit: Alibaba.
Alibaba did not detail how its shoppers will be able to verify the authenticity of the foodstuffs…..
Read more : Techinasia.com, by Steven Millward, Alibaba to use blockchain to fight China’s fake food