Blockchain Allows Identifying True Honey
Products that use this platform will be identified with the BeeMark label, which will have ecological and scientific information.
The traceability of food products also reached the honey bee production industry. The problem of fake honey occurs worldwide. In some cases, the fake honey is a mixture of rice and corn sweetened with sugar, which is not healthy for people who cannot consume this type of food.
Food Safety News studies have shown that 76% of the honey sold in the United States is not pure honey. In the best cases, this fake honey is ultra-filtered honey. Some of these “honeys” may even contain Chloramphenicol, an antibiotic that is banned in the United States for causing diseases and being related to cancer.
Because of this problem, some people resort to tricks to recognize when honey is pure. Some explain that true honey crystallizes over time, or that if the honey is placed in a glass of water, it does not dissolve. It is also said that pure honey ignites with a match.
But to avoid any inconvenience and that consumers can be surer of the authenticity of a honey, the Oracle blockchain will keep data on the production process of this item.
Important Alliance
Oracle and World Bee Project teamed up to work on this project that seeks not only to take advantage of all the advantages of blockchain technology, but also to ensure that the origin of the honey produced is from ecological and sustainable sources.
“We observe the health of the bees, we observe the temperature of the bees, the amount of honey that has been produced, what they need to be able to spend the winter and then we take the harvest and we can go through the different crushing processes, taking the honey panel, fermenting or purifying that honey”.
In the books of accounting or distributed and unalterable record, each supplier or participant in the honey supply chain must upload the information related to the honey product.
At the end, there should be information about each stage of the production and distribution process. The data collected would help to track honey from its hive to its final destination.
All this verifiable information can help qualify honey as authentic. This would help that when consumers observe the label on the bottle of honey in the store, they will know that the honey is real and know where it comes from.
Features to Guarantee Quality
Simon Potts, global advisor on pollination in the European Union will participate in the project. As part of the innovations, Oracle will take some data into account to help verify honey. Some of these data are: analyze the habitat that surrounds the hives, compare the type of pollen with the pollen of the plants of the locality where the honey was harvested.
In addition, the pollen firm will be registered so that it can be compared with samples taken in the supply chain and verify if there were any changes. In this way, if the honey contains maple pollen and the hive is far from the maple areas, this would mean that the honey was modified.
By María Rodríguez