Blockchain in Food Industry Traceability: Guaranteeing Origin and Safety

Food supply chains have become longer, more globalised and harder to supervise. Each year, according to the World Health Organisation, unsafe food causes approximately 600 million illnesses and 420,000 deaths worldwide. In the European Region alone, more than 23 million people fall ill from contaminated food.

Traditional traceability systems, based on paper, spreadsheets or isolated databases, are ill-equipped to handle this complexity. Locating the origin of a contaminated batch can take days or weeks, with considerable public health and economic costs.

Blockchain technology makes it possible to replace these fragmented records with a shared, immutable and auditable history accessible to all actors in the supply chain, from the field to the supermarket shelf.

Food traceability is a legal obligation in the European Union and a risk management instrument that protects public health. Blockchain enables compliance through distributed, immutable and auditable records that overcome the limitations of conventional systems and accelerate responses to health alerts in increasingly complex supply chains.

Regulation (EC) 178/2002 obliges all food business operators to identify their immediate suppliers and customers through the "one step back – one step forward" approach. The Spanish Food Safety and Nutrition Agency (AESAN — Agencia Española de Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutrición) notes that every company must maintain a documentary system enabling the authorities to act swiftly in the event of an incident. However, the minimum legal standard rests on basic batch entry and exit records, which are frequently managed in heterogeneous and unconnected formats.

These shortcomings result in delays of days or weeks when tracing the precise origin of a contaminated batch, vulnerability to human error and duplication, and a lack of interoperability between producers, processors, distributors and retailers. Official documentation, including phytosanitary and health certificates, is equally affected by this fragmentation.

Blockchain technology resolves these limitations by providing a shared ledger amongst all participants in the supply chain. Each relevant event is added as a transaction validated by multiple nodes and cryptographically linked, which prevents the manipulation of historical records without the rest of the network detecting it. Permissioned blockchains, where only accredited organisations operate nodes, add the access control and confidentiality required by a sector as heavily regulated as food.

Blockchain applied to the food chain records every event in a product's journey — from harvest or slaughter through to delivery at the point of sale — in cryptographically linked blocks that generate a shared, immutable and verifiable history for all authorised participants in the network.

Each transaction represents a specific event associated with batch identifiers, dates, locations and quality data such as temperature or certifications. International standards such as GS1/EPCIS (Electronic Product Code Information Services) define how to capture and share this information using a structured "what, who, when, where and why" model, enabling the complete journey of a batch to be reconstructed within seconds. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) also promotes the UTX format (Universal Traceability data eXchange) and the FoodEx2 classification system to facilitate interoperability between tools and accelerate the investigation of cross-border outbreaks.

The most common architecture combines two layers. The on-chain layer stores identifiers, hashes and essential metadata for each event, along with links to certificates and laboratory results. The off-chain layer houses voluminous or commercially sensitive information in corporate databases, referenced from the blockchain via cryptographic fingerprints that allow integrity to be verified without exposing the data. This design reconciles blockchain traceability with commercial confidentiality and data protection.

The value of this infrastructure increases when records are fed from automated sources. Temperature sensors in cold storage, GPS (Global Positioning System) loggers in transport and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) readers on the factory floor enable data to be incorporated without manual intervention. It should be noted that blockchain guarantees the immutability of what has been recorded, but not the accuracy of the data at the point of capture. Rigorous implementations therefore incorporate device certification, capture process audits and source redundancy to minimise the risk of incorrect information at source.

Blockchain reduces the time taken to trace food products from days to seconds, strengthens the fight against origin fraud, improves automated regulatory compliance and enables consumers to verify product information from their smartphones via a QR code.

The most striking evidence comes from Walmart's pilots with IBM. The time required to locate the origin of a batch of mangoes in American stores fell from approximately seven days to 2.2 seconds following the implementation of a blockchain-based traceability system. This improvement makes it possible to isolate affected batches without withdrawing entire product categories, thereby reducing food waste and the direct and indirect costs of product recalls.

Auditing is also transformed. Blockchain converts the traceability record into an immutable, structured history that auditors and inspectors can access with specific permissions. Rather than gathering documents from different systems, the operator can present verifiable evidence aligned with the requirements of Regulation (EU) 2017/625 on official controls, which demands transparency, publication of results and electronic data exchange between Member States. This capability extends to all logistics and container tracking that connects the various links in the food supply chain.

Food fraud also encounters a significant obstacle. The falsification of protected designations of origin, the substitution of ingredients or the sale of conventional products as organic become detectable when every batch carries a chronological and immutable record. The consumer becomes an active verifier by scanning the QR code on the packaging to consult the origin, key dates, certifications and production conditions — generating trust, brand differentiation and a greater willingness to pay a premium for traced products.

The Blockchain Services Infrastructure of Spain (ISBE — Infraestructura de Servicios Blockchain de España) offers a public-permissioned network with integrated regulatory compliance that enables food businesses and public administrations to register certifications, anchor integrity proofs and verify official documentation with legal validity, without the need to deploy their own infrastructure.

Its design incorporates compliance with GDPR and eIDAS2 (the European digital identity regulation) by design, amongst other frameworks, at both technical and governance level, to guarantee trust and legal validity. The requirements of further regulations — including MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation), DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act), the Data Act, LSMVI, ENS and NIS2 — have also been integrated, facilitating adaptation to legal and technological developments.

For the food sector, this infrastructure opens up concrete application scenarios. Companies can register and verify official certificates — such as health certificates, organic certifications or protected designations of origin — issued by competent authorities and verifiable within seconds by auditors and international clients. They can also issue verifiable credentials for food operators attesting to HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) compliance, passed audits or membership of differentiated quality schemes, reusable across different contexts such as licences, exports or commercial contracts.

Certifications generated within business networks can be anchored in ISBE to confer additional legal validity under the eIDAS2 framework, whilst maintaining the operational functionality of each sector-specific platform. This combination of "business blockchain" and "public trust infrastructure" lowers barriers to entry for agri-food SMEs by offering ready-to-use tools, APIs and smart contracts, accelerating the deployment of traceability and certification solutions aligned with European standards.

Does your food business need verifiable traceability, more agile auditing and genuine consumer trust? Discover how ISBE enables blockchain to be integrated into your supply chain with European regulatory compliance, without building infrastructure from scratch. We invite you to watch the ISBE video to learn about its use cases in detail and the impact it is already generating for businesses and public administrations.

Carrefour launched Spain's first blockchain-based food traceability system in 2018, applied to its free-range chicken "Calidad y Origen" ("Quality and Origin"), in collaboration with the Galician cooperative Coren and the IBM Food Trust platform. Consumers can access the product's complete history by scanning a QR code printed on the packaging label.

The data flow spans the entire supply chain. In the primary production stage, the farmer records batch data including birth date, breed, feed type and permitted veterinary treatments. The abattoir and processing plant log slaughter, butchering, packaging, batch number and use-by date. Logistics centres and hauliers record receipt, storage and dispatch, including temperature conditions and transit times. On arrival at the store, the batch status is updated and linked to the QR code that the consumer scans with their smartphone.

Each participant in the chain sees only the information relevant to their role, whilst the consumer accesses a transparency-oriented subset covering origin, key dates, certifications and animal welfare practices. Carrefour has extended this model to eggs, milk, cheese, meat, fruit and vegetables as part of its "Act for Food" programme.

The olive oil sector provides another significant example. In 2022, Deoleo became the first large consumer brand of EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil) in Spain to display batch-by-batch traceability via blockchain, also on IBM Food Trust. Buyers can consult, bottle by bottle, information on the origin of the olives, varieties, quality control results and sustainability certifications. Nueva Pescanova applies the same approach to seafood products, recording the catch zone and date, feed and transport conditions. These examples confirm that the value of blockchain traceability is greatest for products where the consumer perceives either a risk or an added value, such as those labelled "antibiotic-free", "locally sourced" or "sustainably fished".

What is the difference between traditional traceability and food blockchain?

Traditional traceability disperses information across isolated systems belonging to each operator, applying the "one step back – one step forward" approach of Regulation (EC) 178/2002. Blockchain creates a shared, chronological and immutable record amongst all participants in the supply chain, reducing tracing time from days to seconds and improving resistance to data manipulation.

Is implementing blockchain very costly for a food SME?

The cost depends on the scope of the project and the level of prior digitalisation. Platforms such as IBM Food Trust offer pay-as-you-go models that reduce the initial investment. Public infrastructures such as ISBE aim to lower barriers to entry through shared tools, available APIs and support from digitalisation programmes, although specific fees will depend on sectoral governance agreements.

How does blockchain help to comply with food safety regulations?

Blockchain does not replace self-monitoring systems such as HACCP, but it does make it easier to demonstrate compliance. It immutably records events in the supply chain, critical control points, temperatures and certifications, enabling the operator to present structured evidence to auditors and authorities in accordance with Regulation (EC) 178/2002 and Regulation (EU) 2017/625.