Blockchain-Based Food Traceability: A Dataflow Perspective

Blockchain is a promising technology to address the problems of information asymmetry and information tampering in food traceability. Food data items can be tracked with tamper-resistant blockchain data tagging with the food processing information along the food supply chain. The blockchain dataflow, which identifies the input and output data of the food processing workflow, plays a vital role to design the blockchain-based food traceability systems. In this paper, we provide a framework to identify the blockchain dataflow items with the dimensions of data properties (i.e., static or dynamic) and data requirements (i.e., mandatory or optional). Based on this framework, we propose a dataflow reference model for stakeholders along food supply chains, and provide a dataflow matrix to analyze the stakeholders' access rights to the traceable food data. The dataflow reference model and matrix can serve as tools to standardize data formats in the design of blockchain-based food traceable systems.