I don't disagree with your example (while ISO 900x is prevalent there are at least two other, generally equivalent and widely used, food safety and quality certifications out there). And yes, RFIDs are great and I personally wish were used a bit more extensively. What was talked about today is the potential to greatly reduce recall event time lines, FDA investigations, etc. The issue was described as: 1. The only FDA traceability requirement being 1 up and 1 down in the supply chain from the manufacturer. Which leads to 2. 2. The lack of interoperable data from farm to retail store. If there is a lot of lettuce with E Coli from one farm, which went to five ready to eat manufacturers and eight produce packers, all of whom have different lot code designations, and all of whom ship to numerous distributors who in turn ship to even more numerous retail outlets, you end up with a very complex and time consuming traceability process.
I've never done food safety. I've done FDA and general manufacturing and TuV rules that world so it was an easy example. So if I'm understanding the discussion, your point (1) issue is that the granularity of tracking as it currently stands ain't great and your point (2) issue is that what tracking is available it's proprietary, not interoperable and cannot be parsed by an external observer, correct? So the first way to deal with this is through monopoly. Amazon decides to sell insulin. Amazon's Choice Insulin is made wherever Amazon feels like making it, and it's tracked from dead pig to doorstep using Amazon's logistics. Amazon owns the farms, owns the labs, owns the storage facilities and owns the trucks. The next solution is through a large logistics company. This has been UPS' approach for decades: "we got great logistics and we'll let you buy into it." They may not make the insulin or sell it but the more deeply involved they are in your supply chain the better your insight into your supply chain. Let's make an example of Chipotle. Chipotle ends up with more food safety scares than most fast or fast casual chains because of their commitment to local. This means they have a diverse and non-standard logistics chain which gives them crappy insight into what came from where. Compare and contrast with McDonald's - more than half of their french fries worldwide come direct from Simplot. Nothing wrong with Simplot? Nothing wrong with McD's french fries. The useful aspect of blockchain is it gives you Simplot-grade trust, UPS-grade tracking and Chipotle-grade diversity because you're replacing UPS with a trustless organization that anybody can interact with. Any vendor under smart contract is subject to Simplot-grade homogeneity without Simplot-grade oversight. And Joes Tacos can get massive agribusiness-grade supply from anyone who is willing to interact with the smart contracts you wish to govern your logistics chain with. The ultimate goal of blockchains is disintermediation. Right now you need an organization like UPS to provide you with traceable logistics. You need a Simplot-sized vendor to give you supply chain homogeneity. And you need Amazon-sized leverage to demand adherence to your standards as a manufacturer. But with blockchain, the contracts are up where they can be read by anyone and the standards to adhere to are available to all. Because the blockchain is trustless (self-reinforcing), nobody gets paid unless they stick to your standards and you can't stiff anyone if they adhere to the contract. Bob's Blockchain Business might wrap all this up and hire a bunch of guys to be logistics to compete for these contracts while taking 5% off the top; if he's on a public blockchain, Charlie's Crypto Commuters can take that same organization and do it for 4% without getting out of bed. The end result is that anyone nimble enough to meet the requirements can provide the same level of trust as a Fortune 500 logistics company, and anybody on the blockchain can experience the same level of service as a Fortune 500 vendor. Make sense? I don't know if I've recommended this book to you before, but if so, I'll do it again. It's "what the fuck is a blockchain" for normies that understand how to balance a checkbook but not compile C.