With Food Pathogens on the Rise, FDA to Employ Smart Digital Technologies

Blockchain uses a decentralized, secure ledger that’s shared by all parties in the supply chain to provide transparency on a product’s origins. It can greatly assist in warning consumers about risks with specific foods and in implementing more targeted and efficient recalls.

“Today’s technology can provide us with insights that were not possible even a handful of years ago,” says David Acheson, MD, former associate FDA commissioner for foods and founder and CEO of The Acheson Group. “But going even deeper than the DNA insights of an outbreak is the ability of today’s technology to trace a food forward, backward, and sideways. The technological ability is there, but with the regulatory requirement being only one forward/one back, the incentive is, unfortunately, a bit lacking,” Dr. Acheson says. “We can blame it on all sorts of things, but there’s no denying that the industry could, and can, do better.”

Tracing is only one area where technology can enhance food safety. “We’ll also be looking at how to leverage emerging technologies and other approaches that are being used in society and business sectors all around us, such as distributed ledgers, sensors, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence,” explained Dr. Sharpless and Yiannas—who before joining FDA last December had overseen the implementation of blockchain technology at Walmart.

“There’s a lot industry and government—whether it’s the states or the federal government—can do to advance food safety,” they added. “Tackling food safety is a shared responsibility, and there’s much more we can do together and in a manner that benefits people, food companies, and the planet.”

Dr. Acheson agrees. “We have to find a way to move faster in these types of outbreaks,” he says, “and that will require a commitment and resources from the government at the state and federal levels, likely new regulations, and, of course, industry at all levels—including retail and food service—using the technology that is already available.”