BeefChain - How the Blockchain provides a Pedigree for Free Range Beef

wolfsheed (32)in #blockchain • 7 years ago

Raising a calf to be eaten is an expensive process. Regardless of what you may think of agricultural techniques commonly known as Factory Farming, people are willing to pay a premium for gains in the ethics and meat quality of the animal, the problem is trust.

How does someone who wants free range beef know that their meat is really free range, especially when there's a bounty available to encourage farmers to cheat the system?

Right now, there is the only way is to find a farm that sells animals to the public, go there pick out the animal you want, have it butchered, and then store the meat in your home. But this supply is limited, and the process is involved and expensive.

The idea is to add RFID trackers to the animals, and store their identities on an immutable blockchain in order to ensure that the cow is from a free range source at every step of its life. You could one day know where your steak was born and fattened up - if you're willing to pay the price that is.

Part of the reason that we have factory farms in the first place is because most people don't care enough about the origin of meat to pay extra for it. The tracking technology is going to put more overhead on the already expensive process of raising free range beef. Another issue is the physical security of the tracking devices (Sure, you can't edit the identity of the cow on the blockchain, but you can steal/swap out the earring.)

Nevertheless this is an interesting use of blockchain technology, and could provide the trust that some consumers are looking for.

Would you be interested in tracking the pedigree of cows that you consume, and do you think that keeping this info on the blockchain adds a level of security that would help you trust the system when you otherwise wouldn't? Do you think that this will increase the popularity of free range beef, or of food supply use of blockchain?