“The Department of Health and Human Services already uses blockchain in its acquisition shop to buy bulk items more cheaply, but now the Food and Drug Administration sees it as a tool to manage threats to the global food supply chain…”
“Frank Yiannas, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for food policy and response, said the agency looks to use blockchain to pinpoint the source of food safety concerns in a matter of minutes, not days…”
“FDA’s push toward tech-driven food safety stems from a multistate outbreak of E. coli in November. The agency urged the public to avoid eating romaine lettuce, and requested restaurants and grocery stores to pull it from kitchens and shelves. It took several days for the FDA to track the contamination to a few farms in California.”
“While the private sector is already testing blockchain tools, the FDA would oversee the data, and would serve as a regulator to ensure interoperability.”
“’I believe if government steps up and says, these are the standards, the data attributes that have to be traced, it makes it easy for private solutions to scale and not have to create their own standards,’ Yiannas said.”
“But the FDA is only the latest component within HHS that has found uses for blockchain…” Read the full article or listen to the podcast here.
Source: For HHS, blockchain means faster ID management and safer mangoes – By Jory Heckman, June 6, 2019. Federal News Network.
