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Thank You from Element Electronics Together with Walmart, Element is bringing the world's best technology home with TVs assembled in the U.S.A. at a price customers will love. Amazing technology, aff ordably priced. elementelectronics.com ASSEMBLED IN THE 18 NWA Democrat-Gazette Walmart Shareholders Thursday, June 1, 2017 Spinach was pulled off grocery stores shelves and disappeared from restaurants in the fall of 2006, when an E. coli outbreak resulted in 205 confirmed illnesses and three deaths across 26 states. Frank Yiannas, vice president of food safety at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., described it as a "worse-case example" for food safety. It took time for officials to identify the exact source of the contamination in the supply chain; meanwhile consum- ers stopped eating spinach, and stores stopped selling it. "If you had traceability systems you could do it really quick and know if it was the implicated lot or not," Yiannas said. "By doing it quickly, you could protect consumers. You could certainly protect unaffected products and allow the sale of products that were unaffected." Wal-Mart and IBM are developing a better solution through the use of block- chain technology. The companies are working together on a pilot program they believe has the potential to reinvent the way food is tracked worldwide as it moves through the supply chain – from producers, distributors and grocers — before reaching consumers. A blockchain is a digital, distrib- uted ledger used to record transactions securely. To this point, the technology has been linked closely to the finan- cial services industry. But Wal-Mart announced last year it was partnering with IBM to develop blockchain ledgers to use in the food system, tracking pork in China and an unspecified produce item in the U.S. "We've been, what I call, pursuing this holy grail of traceability for over a decade," Yiannas said. "When we came across this blockchain technology we thought, 'This has the potential to really be a disruptive technology and be a solu- tion to facilitate traceability and transpar- ency.'" Food-borne illnesses affect about 48 million Americans — or 1 in 6 — each year, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In addition, 128,000 people are hospitalized and 3,000 die annually. While problems like the spinach outbreak threaten consumers, they also present challenges for retailers, distrib- utors and producers who race to track the source of recalled items in the supply chain. Currently, Yiannas said, records regarding food are generally kept on paper, leaving a complete view of the distribution network difficult to attain. The Food and Drug Administration requires companies to track one step ahead of them and one step behind in the supply chain. From days to minutes With blockchain, the time to find the exact source of the issue — like in the case of the spinach outbreak — can be trimmed from days to minutes. Annibal Sodero, an assistant professor of supply chain management at the University of Arkansas Sam M. Walton College of Business, said the implications for food safety are huge. "You know at what point contami- nation happened," Sodero said. "You know which pallets, which cases were involved. You will know at which stores and distribution centers. So for trace- ability it will be a snap, really, to find the source. It's a huge cost to have to pull everything from the stores instead of just pulling that batch that got contam- inated." The benefits of a digitized food system also have potential to reach further than traceability, according to Wal-Mart and IBM. Detailed information collected as part of the digital ledger could help improve efficiency — and lower costs — in getting products from the farm to consumers. A more efficient system of tracking food could also help reduce food waste. Improved transparency throughout the supply chain should be possible as well because of the amount of infor- mation available. With blockchain, the risk for fraud or tampering would be reduced because of the digital database. "Blockchain isn't magic fairy dust," said Brigid McDermott, IBM's vice president of blockchain business devel- opment. "But what blockchain does that Wal-Mart, IBM team on food-safety tracking ArkAnsAs DemocrAt-GAzette See Safety, Page 19