Consumers and grocers who want to verify the quality of the beef they sell are asking for increased supply chain transparency. Vivian Tai, Director of Innovation at GS1 US visited with Earth911 in February 2024 to introduce GS1's Digital Link advanced universal product code and returns to talk beef transparency with Jayson Berryhill, cofounder of Wholechain, who worked with GS1 to develop a new standard for cattle traceability using innovative blockchain technology. Wholechain Cattle Traceability is a system for verifying compliance with various standards, including animal welfare and feeding practices. Wholechain’s blockchain-based system ensures that information about the entire supply chain—such as where the cattle were raised, what they ate, and their treatment in life—can be tracked and authenticated.

We explore how their collaboration will provide you with more information and how Wholechain’s platform might be used to calculate environmental impacts, such as deforestation and methane emissions, while helping companies comply with regulations that shape the world’s food supply, like the Food & Drug Administration’s Food Safety Modernization Act Rule 204, which requires business to maintain records of food production, processing, and distribution to enable rapid identification of contamination sources during a foodborne illness outbreak. We’ll also discuss how Wholechain’s blockchain technology could expand beyond cattle to other industries, creating more transparent, sustainable, and circular global supply chains. You can learn more about Wholechain at https://wholechain.com/ and about GS1’s traditional rectangular bar codes and next-generation 2D QR code, GS1 Digital Link at https://www.gs1us.org/