Food provenance (traceability & trust)

Download the source PDF:

• food_production.pdf

Problem

Consumers and regulators increasingly want trustworthy answers to:

• where was this product produced?
• when was it harvested/processed?
• did it meet handling/storage standards?

Paper-based or siloed databases make end-to-end provenance hard to verify and easy to forge.

What Catalyst enables (conceptually)

• Shared source of truth across multiple parties (producer → logistics → retailer)
• Non-forgeable attestations: each party signs the data they add
• Auditability: a tamper-evident timeline of custody and claims

A practical architecture

1. At harvest/production, create a batch identifier (or token) for the lot.
2. At each handoff, write an attestation:
   • who handled it (identity key)
   • what happened (event type)
   • when/where (timestamp, location)
   • optional sensor evidence (IoT readings) stored off-chain, anchored by hash
3. End users scan a QR code and see:
   • the provenance timeline
   • the signed claims

Verify

• Pick a product batch and trace it end-to-end.
• Show that a forged “producer claim” cannot be verified without the producer key.