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![]() Retail giants Walmart and JD.com are among several companies supporting a new blockchain attempt in China, focused on the safety and traceability of products. ![]() 14.Dec.17 2:29 PM By Daria Zaytseva Photo Toinnov.com |
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Along with Tsinghua University National Engineering Laboratory for E-Commerce Technologies and IBM, the four parties established the Blockchain Food Safety Alliance, which will seek to connect enterprises along the food supply chain to the most populous country in the world. According to the statement, the idea is to develop a "standard method of collecting data on the origin, safety and authenticity of food" among the parties involved, and blockchain is the technological basis for recording that information in real time. For Walmart, the effort is an extension of its previous work on the food supply chain. In October 2016, the retailer announced that it was working with Tsinghua and IBM to track pork products - a process that the company called "very encouraging" during the presentation earlier this year. The inclusion of JD.com, an e-commerce platform for consumers that numbered more than 200 million users as of September, is remarkable, given its overall footprint in China. And reports that JD.com intends to import billions of dollars over the next several years would theoretically create a large stock of tracking products. |