[Chapter-delegates] Blockchain and Food Tracability

[Christian de Larrinaga]

Johan I agree.

Even Satoshi's bitcoin white paper has a flavour of the economists'
standard let out clause when describing their latest theory "all things
being equal ... then .." about the ability of the math to enforce trust
in bitcoin.

The problem for bitcoinists is similar to economists. Technology and its
distribution and governance that the math rests on never remains equal.
At least bitcoin as a protocol for inserting data into a database is inert.

Other blockchains such as Ethereum introduced programability (so called
turing complete languages) whose main characteristic is to escalate the
probability of technical uncertainties at multiple layers in the
protocols in influencing what gets inserted. Governance for such
environments is very tricky particularly where the protocol environment
makes the assumption that it is mathematically flawless when it comes to
its self governance. Show me a forkless self governing blockchain
anybody. Even those that have raised $50m or more in speculative funding
have suffered massive consequences from systemic flaws leaving their
operators facing existential questions such as whether to intervene to
cancel transactions deemed fraudulent but in so doing admit that the
self governance of the protocol by the protocol is not dependable.

Traceability is hugely important and not just for food. It depends on
very complex webs of trust, laws and enforcement and even cultural and
educational capacity.

The consequences of getting this wrong are serious.

Sympathy and shared outrage with the family of poor Natasha
Ednan-Laperouse, 15,died on a flight to Nice after buying a sandwich at
Pret a Manger outlet at Heathrow Airport in 2016. The bread itself
contained sesame seeds which were not labelled. In this instance the
coroner found that Pret a Manager depended on an exception to labelling
intended for small outlets making their own food on the premises
allowing them to state ingredients orally rather than on packaging.

report at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45679320

This is an warning that data that is vital for life which is reliable
and comprehensible end to end has to traverse many interests and domains
with differing needs and priorities.


Christian



Johan Jörgensen wrote:
> Trust is always needed before we can secure through technology. Bio
> data plus identifier is probably where we’ll go. Trust plus an open
> and general identifier system plus blockchain is probably a good
> starting point. Blockchain on its own - as you point out John - is not
> enough.
>
>
> lör 29 sep. 2018 kl. 01:12 skrev Niran Beharry <nbeharrytt at gmail.com
> <mailto:nbeharrytt at gmail.com>>:
>
>     There is a local system being deployed to do plant to bar (this is
>     for tracking cocoa pods to final product)
>     Niran
>
>     On Fri, Sep 28, 2018, 11:40 John Levine <isocmember at johnlevine.com
>     <mailto:isocmember at johnlevine.com>> wrote:
>
>         In article
>         <CAN7+85fyCw17jZX07Jn8Pi6DyU2Ai_u2sig1yEXKGqQcztxPVQ at mail.gmail.com
>         <mailto:CAN7%2B85fyCw17jZX07Jn8Pi6DyU2Ai_u2sig1yEXKGqQcztxPVQ at mail.gmail.com>>
>         you write:
>         >-=-=-=-=-=-
>         >-=-=-=-=-=-
>         >
>         >http://theinstitute.ieee.org/resources/standards/how-blockchain-technology-could-track-and-trace-food-from-farm-to-fork
>         >
>         >This is very interesting since its  US law to trace food that is
>         >contaminated ie. E Coli etc  back to the actual farm
>
>         Tracing food is a dandy idea but this makes the usual blockchain
>         enthusiast error of assuming that if it's on the blockchain it
>         must be
>         true.  Tagging the food and accurately identifying what each
>         tag is
>         attached to is the hard part, not sticking the tag IDs in a
>         database.
>
>         All the tags in the world won't help if a sleazy packer can just
>         put a tag for a clean field on produce from a dirty field.
>
>         R's,
>         JOhn
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> -- 
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-- 
Christian de Larrinaga
@ FirstHand
-------------------------
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cdel at firsthand.net