Blockchain: Just Because It's A Buzzword Doesn't Mean It's Not The Future Of The Supply Chain

On November 26, 2018, an E. coli scare that authorities suspect originated with the contamination of a few heads of lettuce on one farm in California led to the recall of romaine lettuce throughout Canada and the United States. As with all such preventive measures, the recall was carried out in order to protect consumers from products that may be harmful to them. Also common to most recalls is that authorities and industry stakeholders find it difficult to trace the origins of contaminants or defects. But what if it were possible to trace the exact path of each shipment of lettuce and remove from the marketplace only those products that could reasonably have been affected?

In fact, this is already possible with a tool called blockchain. Blockchain is, of course, a word used by many who don't understand what it is. The aim of this article is to allow you to become one of the people who does understand what it is: a way of storing data in a shared, synchronized and