Alibaba taps technology behind bitcoin to tackle food fraud

The Australian operation of Alibaba Group is exploring new ways to address food fraud risk by using the technology behind bitcoin to track the product life cycle of food products.

Alibaba Australia on Friday teamed up with several partners, including PricewaterhouseCoopers and Blackmores, the Australian manufacturer of nutritional supplements, to establish a food trust framework to curb the spread of counterfeit food online.

The project is designed to enhance traceability models and introduce new technologies to mitigate the risk of counterfeit and fraudulent food products. “This will include the development of a pilot blockchain technologies solution model for vendors to be utilised by participants across the supply chain,” Alibaba, which owns the South China Morning Post, said in a statement on Friday.

Blockchain technologies are used to track the transactions of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Ant Financial, the online finance major controlled by Alibaba’s billionaire founder Jack Ma, has since last year been using blockchain technology to record transactions of charitable donations in China in a bid to improve accountability of the country’s philanthropic organisations.

Alibaba envisages that the Australian pilot run of the food trust framework will form the basis of a global supply chain model that can be applied across all of Alibaba Group’s e-commerce markets.