Chinese blockchain solves counterfeiting, food security, and prevent supply chain attacks.

For example, recently, customers in China have been able to buy Blockchain chickens.® Chinese insurance company ZhongAn has used Inchain* and ToT® to enable consumers to track the chickens they purchase, giving them peace of mind that the chickens are truly free-range and authentic®. “Gogochicken”, as the product is called, allows consumers to examine the chicken’s age and rearing location, how far it walked each day, the degree of air pollution in its environment, the quality of the water it drank, when it was quarantined, when slaughtered, and other details. All of this is recorded in a secure digital ledger based on Blockchain’. As the company boasts in its advertisement, the tech is intended “to bring you and your family visible assurance®. French supermarket chain Carrefour SA® has successfully employed Blockchain technology to record the provenance of their chickens, and similar supply-chain data systems are being explored by Alibaba and JD, two China-based e-commerce giants.

Last year, Alibaba Australia launched a Blockchain-based initiative called Food Trust Framework to improve cross-border food supply chain traceability'®. Alibaba joined forces with Australia Post, Blackmores Limited and PwC in 2017 to explore the use of Blockchain technology to address supply-chain fraud in the food industry.!! The system, which is being piloted in Australia and New Zealand, aims to ship food, especially dairy products, from Australia and New Zealand to China via Alibaba’s Tmall Global platform. The system enables online shoppers on Taobao and Tmall to verify the authenticity of food products and avoid potentially dangerous counterfeits.'> In 2018, Tang Ren, Cainiao’s senior technical expert for international logistics, promised: “With logistics data being uploaded from all parties, such as retailers and customs officials, buyers can cross-reference every detail of their purchases. Any attempts to conduct data fraud or add in counterfeit products will be as difficult as landing on Mars.”'?

Chinese online retail giant JD has also taken the plunge, becoming the first Chinese business to join the Blockchain in Transport Alliance in the battle against counterfeits.'* JD launched a Blockchain Open Platform in 2017, and has established a Blockchain Food Safety Alliance with Walmart, IBM and the National Engineering Lab for E-commerce Technology of Tsinghua University. '> The intention is to pioneer the use of Blockchain to enhance food safety through cooperation with Chinese food suppliers, retailers and food safety supervision organizations. '°A few examples have also emerged in the wine industry, with famous Chinese wine groups such as Maotai, Wuliangye and Yianghe cooperating with JD, IBM and Alibaba’s Ant Financial to use Blockchain against the rampant fake wine trade in China!”.

Elsewhere, BlockVerify'® is using Blockchain to authenticate and track the origin of pharmaceuticals'®. Products are labelled with a unique tag which can be tracked on the Blockchain, allowing products to be monitored as they travel along the supply chain. This facilitates the identification of counterfeit goods, fraudulent transactions and stolen merchandise, making it easier for consumers and retailers to examine a secure history for a given product. Walmart is also using Blockchain in its supply chain to track products back to their roots — quite literally*’. Since September 2018.*' Walmart’s Sam’s Club division have required suppliers of fresh, leafy greens to use IBM Blockchain to implement real-time, end-to-end traceability of their products back to the farm.?*

In the pharmaceutical industry, Mediledger has launched a pilot project to use Ethereum® (o record and verify drugs on Blockchain. Companies such as Genentech, Pfizer, McKesson, Abbvie and AmensourceBergen are involved in the implementation of this pilot project®. The beneficial applications of Blockchain were also debated during the Chinese vaccine scandal in July 2018, an episode that elicited widespread concern both in China and abroad?. Li Xiaolai, one of China’s best-known cryptocurrency investors, published an article on his own WeChat public account arguing for a Blockchain-based ledger for pharmaceutical tracking. He pointed out that “Openness and Transparency”?’ are the most important issues in public affairs. He proposed that a currency-free Blockchain could provide open and transparent records of all the information during transit.?®