Blockchain-Enabled Supply Chain platform for Indian Dairy Industry: Safety and Traceability

Abstract

Conventional food supply chains are centralized in nature and possess challenges pertaining to a single point of failure, product irregularities, quality compromises, and loss of data. Numerous cases of food fraud, contamination, and adulteration are daily reported from multiple parts of India, suggesting the absolute need for an upgraded decentralized supply chain model. A country such as India, where its biggest strength is its demographic dividend, cannot afford to malnutrition a large population of its children by allowing them to consume contaminated and adulterated dairy products. In view of the gravity of the situation, we propose a blockchain-enabled supply chain platform for the dairy industry. With respect to the supply chain platform, the dairy products of choice include milk, cheese, and butter. Blockchain is one of the fastest growing technologies having widespread acceptance across multiple industry verticals. Blockchain possesses the power to transform traditional supply chains into decentralized, robust, transparent, tamper proof, and sustainable supply chains. The proposed supply chain platform goes beyond the aspect of food traceability and focuses on maintaining the nutritional values of dairy products, identification of adulteration and contamination in dairy products, the increasing economic viability of running a dairy farm, preventing counterfeit dairy products, and enhancing the revenue of the dairy company. The paper collates the mentioned functionalities into four distinct impact dimensions: social, economic, operations, and sustainability. The proposed blockchain-enabled dairy supply chain platform combines the use of smart contracts, quick response code (QR code) technology, and IoT and has the potential to redefine the dairy supply chains on socio-economic, operational, and sustainability parameters.

Traceability in the Indian dairy industry: Concept and practice

“…As technology continues to improve, new and more accurate methods for detecting adulteration will likely be developed, ensuring the safety and quality of dairy products for consumers. Industry 4.0-based techniques, such as decentralised traceability based on IoT and blockchain, are also potential solutions to stop adulteration at very early stages and trace the source of adulteration (Khanna et al 2022).…”

“…The production and consumption of milk-related value-added products (VAP) in India have increased significantly recently (Imarc Group 2022). Despite having the largest dairy animal population and a variety of government programmes, India produces less milk per animal than countries like the United States and the United Kingdom (Khanna et al 2022). The lack of technological interventions, nonscientific methods, ineffective cattle breeding, poor management techniques and many other factors have all contributed to the slow growth of the Indian dairy industry.…”

“…Industry 4.0‐based techniques, such as decentralised traceability based on IoT and blockchain, are also potential solutions to stop adulteration at very early stages and trace the source of adulteration (Khanna et al . 2022).…”

“…Traceability has gained considerable attention in many industries, including the food sector. The reports suggest thousands of people worldwide have become infected after consuming adulterated and contaminated food items over the last few years (Khanna et al 2022). Dairy products are one such category of food that has seen significant adulteration and contamination.…”

Operationalizing transparency in supply chains using a systematic literature review and graph theoretic approach

“…Dairy and pharmaceutical supply chain are more prominent due to their immediate impact on end customers' health. Thereby, case studies on dairy supply chains (Khanna et al, 2022;Casino et al, 2021;Varavallo et al, 2022) and pharmaceutical supply chains (Abdallah and Nizamuddin, 2023;Liu et al, 2023;Mani et al, 2022;Haji et al, 2021) has been on the rise in recent literature. Montecchi et al (2021) and Shoaib et al (2023) in their bibliometric analysis highlight major areas of future research related to supply chain transparency.…”