Looks like our food will have ‘birth certificates’ too!
Alibaba seems to be already struggling in its battle with counterfeit goods, especially with their online marketplace, Taobao being one of the world’s most notorious markets for fake goods.
According to Fortune, you can search on Taobao and still find hundreds or thousands of illegitimate or dubious goods from top brands. As much as 90 per cent of New Balance’s 117,000 listings on Taobao are fake or suspect products, according to the clothing company’s last estimates.
Showing They Mean Business
The Chinese e-commerce giant is not taking this issue lightly, and the lawsuit it won against sellers of fake Swarovski watches on Taobao is prove they meant business.
This time, Alibaba is taking it one step further with recent announcement of their fight against fake food. This idea may seem far-fetched to some, but China does have a perennial problem with fake food. Counterfeit soy sauces, rice and eggs are among the few common deadly items up for sale in Chinese supermarkets.
With blockchain, which if it sounds familiar, that’s because it is the tech behind Bitcoin, the e-commerce will be experimenting to track genuine food products. Imagine a digital ledger system trekking through a giant global spreadsheet.
Essentially, Alibaba wants create a system for vendors on their marketplaces to verify the authenticity of the items, whilst weeding out the fakes.
Birth Certificates For Food
This will be their first attempt at this initiative, partnering with CP Food to attach QR codes on their egg products. Consumers will then be able to check all kinds of data related to the eggs they purchase, from the location to even the air quality of these henhouses.
CP Food claimed that they have over 20 henhouses across China, which produces 6.4 million eggs for an estimated 360 million Chinese consumers.
It’s a birth certificate of sorts, and the Chinese giant is hoping that it would be able to eliminate food safety concerns. The blockchain system will debut in Australia and New Zealand, the two most popular food sources for Alibaba’s Chinese consumers. Their exemplary regulatory system also helps ensure that the pilot will run smoothly. For instance, the blockchain could store a cow’s DNA data in a package of Australian steak, creating a digital marker than can be cross referenced with the blockchain in future.
That’s the theory. Alibaba’s blockchain experiment is the first step.
