VeChain offers services to 130 firms in China as food safety alliance member

The VeChain Foundation has joined the China Animal Health And Food Safety Alliance as a council member. 

According to a Sept. 17 announcement, VeChain is “the sole public blockchain technology provider in the alliance” and will offer technical and infrastructure support. There are more than 130 companies in the alliance, including Chinese subsidiaries of Starbucks, McDonald’s, and Walmart.

VeChain — a supply chain tracking project — has reportedly onboarded its first alliance member as a user of its ‘ToolChain’ product and said that more were expected to join. However the announcement did not reveal any details about which alliance member or the scale of the partnership.

The China Animal Health And Food Safety Alliance (CAFA) currently uses the Food Trust Traceability Program. U.S. poultry producer Cargill revealed in June that it was tracking “Chicken 2.0” in China on the CAFA platform using QR codes to provide consumers with information about “the hatchery, farm, production and environment data, certifications and test reports.”

VeChain stated it intends to use its ToolChain platform to assist the CAFA in “building a from-farm-to-table traceability system” across China by building upon the existing Food Trust system.

“All enterprise members of the alliance will be capable of logging key processes of food products onto the blockchain in an immutable and secured way, bridging trust between consumers and the enterprises,” VeChain stated. “Traceability can start from cultivation, processing, packaging, logistics, to retail and more.”

“By powering traceability platforms for alliances such as CAFA and other similar partners, the VeChainThor blockchain would be used by hundreds and thousands of businesses without needing VeChain to approach them individually.”

VeChain’s traceability platform for food and other commodities is being used by firms including Walmart China, car manufacturers BMW and BYD Auto, whitegoods company Haier, clothing company H&M and numerous others. It has a partnership with auditing firm PwC and accredited registrar DNV GL.

The platform uses a proof-of-authority protocol — which allows for fast and low cost transactions at the expense of decentralization — with just 101 authority nodes controlled by corporations or individuals holding at least 25 million of its tokens, which can validate transactions and produce blocks.

According to VeChainStats, there were more than 150,000 data clauses on the VeChain Thor mainnet as of Sept. 16, with 64.3 billion VET tokens in circulation.