Blockchain-Based Transparent and Traceable Halal Food Supply Chain Management Systems

Introduction

The innovative technology of the Blockchains has brought a huge disruption around the globe and is predicted to do the same in Asian region. Blockchains are decentralized and distributed ledgers that have eliminated the need of an intermediary third party for transaction verification and record keeping promoting trustless environment. This is done by providing the autonomy to all its participants to verify the authenticity of transaction. This verification is done through complex mathematics and computations. Since the technology is distributed, hence each node in the blockchain maintains its own copy of the ledger which ensures transparency of the data across the network. Although, the technology of blockchain was introduced with and for cryptocurrencies and banking sector, it eventually spread to other application domains such as education, healthcare, logistics, computer data analytics, etc., as well. The fundamental aim of this book chapter is to highlight the importance of blockchain applicability in logistics and supply chain management sector. In this book chapter, the authors have brought into attention on the benefits and usefulness of deploying blockchain in supply chain networks of the food industry. Food industry has recently experienced huge demand of Halal food by its consumers around the world, especially in Asia. Despite of the claims and Halal certification, there is no way to validate that the food item being sold and distributed by a company is Halal and Tayeb (hygienic). This chapter explores the versatility and usability of blockchain for supply chain management systems (SCMs) to ensure and authenticate the food being Halal. Moreover, this diffusion of blockchain into existing SCMs will assist food auditors to perform auditing easily and conveniently. Hence, this chapter also presents various benefits and challenges of using blockchains for SCMs. Further, various use cases of Halal food industries are considered and blockchain based supply chain frameworks are devised and presented for each one of these. The primary objectives of this chapter are:

• 1.

  To investigate the need and demand of Halal food in food industry.

• 2.

  To investigate the current state of issues in existing food supply chains

• 3.

  To investigate the advantages of applicability of blockchain technology in food supply chains to maintain Halal integrity of the products.

• 4.

  To devise and present blockchain based supply chain framework for Halal integrity of food.

Background

For the past few years, the Asian Pacific region has been in the limelight for its fastest growing economy as compared to rest of the world. One of the top three industries contributing to the region’s economic boost is the food and beverage industry. A major driving force for this growth of food industry in this region, is the rich agricultural resources in ASEAN-5 countries. Although food industries, nowadays, are offering various new food products in compliance to consumer needs, however, it still faces some challenges that need to be overcome for better outcomes, further growth and sustenance of the industry. Some of these challenges include 1) rise of health consciousness among consumers; nowadays, people are more careful about the origin and preparation of the food items (Aday and Aday 2020) they consume as contamination in food has significantly increase. They just want to avoid any adverse effects on their health. 2) concerns about food product traceability (Lawo et al. 2021); not only are people keen on knowing the origin of the product, they also want to have liberty of tracing the food items as they move along various stages of the supply chain. This gives them more transparency of how the food is being handled and distributed, and 3) complications in inventory management systems; discrepancies and missing information may result in ineffective management of inventory items. All these issues are further elaborated and discussed in later sections of the chapter.