The Food Standards Agency (FSA), the UK government department responsible for protecting public health in relation to food, has successfully completed a blockchain pilot, marking the first time the technology has been used as a regulatory tool to ensure compliance in the food sector.

The pilot involved the implementation of the technology in a cattle slaughterhouse. Both the FSA and the slaughterhouse had permission to access data. By using blockchain technology, both the parties benefited from improved transparency across the food supply chain.

“This is a really exciting development. We thought that blockchain technology might add real value to a part of the food industry, such as a slaughterhouse, whose work requires a lot of inspection and collation of results,” Sian Thomas, Head of Information Management, said.

The FSA established a Food and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) collaborative group last year. It plans to conduct a further pilot this month which will give permission to farmers to access data about animals from their farm. Furthermore, it plans to replicate this in other plants as well.

“If use of blockchain technology continues to show success in pilot, then its permanent use would need to be industry-led because the current data model is limited to the collection and communication of inspection results,” the FSA added.