Food safety company Neogen Corporation has entered into a partnership with Ripe Technology (ripe.io) to bring blockchain technology to its food safety diagnostics and animal genomics.
Based in San Francisco and New York City, ripe.io enables companies in the food industry to use its blockchain technology platform to ensure transparency in their food supply chain.
Ripe.io has worked with food producers, food distributors, restaurants and food retailers, which are all key market segments for Neogen.
A form of digital technology, the platform “chains” together “blocks” of information to create a permanent, unalterable record. In the food and livestock industries, blockchain could be used to create the history of products and animals as they go through their entire production cycles.
Through its newly formed partnership, Neogen will adapt ripe.io’s blockchain technology to use in its food safety diagnostics and animal genomics.
When fully integrated with Neogen’s Analytics platform, which enables its customers to automate food safety workflows, the companies believe the two technologies will form the basis for advanced data-driven decisions for its customers.
“Blockchain has tremendous potential throughout the food and livestock industries, both to verify the authenticity of premium products, such as cage-free eggs, and enhance the traceability of issues that require correction, such as those that lead to product recalls,” said John Adent, Neogen’s CEO.
Adent added: “There are countless potential benefits to adopting the technology. For example, the genomic profile of a dairy cow could be connected with the feed the animal eats, its medical history, barn environment, quantity and quality of the milk it produces, etc. Blockchain can serve to optimise the entire supply chains of many of the markets that Neogen serves.”
Raja Ramachandran, ripe.io’s CEO, said: “Neogen’s diagnostics and DNA expertise can add the highest degree of transparency and factual correctness for critical issues around authenticity and accuracy on food recalls. We believe this will change the game in food transparency for improved quality assessment from the beginning of the supply chain all the way to consumers.”
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