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In the 1980s, European experts proposed the concept of food traceability to investigate the causes of mad cow disease (Chen et al., 2015). Since then, Europe has embarked on building a food traceability system, with the issuance of the Food Safety White Paper in 2000 and the Food Basic Law in 2002, laying the legal foundation for the system. To reduce food safety incidents, China advocates the gradual establishment of a legal system for food traceability and has issued relevant regulations and guidelines. Product safety and food loss are essential in the food supply chain. However, it is challenging to achieve centralized supply chain management due to the involvement of multiple stakeholders and the complexity of the links in the food supply chain.
Moreover, the information generated in the supply chain is complex, and traditional information management cannot cover all aspects, leading to information asymmetry and difficulty building trust among supply chain members (Jum’a et al., 2023). Therefore, despite the establishment of food traceability systems and sound legal regulations by governments worldwide, fraud, adulteration, and contamination still occur in the food supply chain (Rogerson & Parry, 2020). In the fruit and vegetable supply chain (FVSC), multiple entities such as agricultural planting companies, logistics companies, regulatory authorities, and consumers are often involved. The traceability process has the characteristics of multiple points, long lines, and comprehensive coverage, and the traceability data has the characteristics of multiple sources and heterogeneity. The high complexity and strong data coupling make it particularly challenging to establish a quality traceability system for fruits and vegetables (Francois et al., 2020).
In research on the traceability of agricultural product supply chains, some studies have used technologies such as radio frequency identification (RFID), QR codes, isotope technology, and mobile wireless monitoring to provide a full-chain traceability system for the supply chain (Hua et al., 2013), and established a food quality and safety traceability system for the supply chain (Zhang et al., 2017), meeting the requirements for traceability and food quality and safety of agricultural products. However, traditional traceability technologies still face the following problems: the information silo effect caused by different underlying platforms of various manufacturers in the supply chain and inadequate anti-tampering capabilities of the traceability system.
Blockchain technology is often used in traceability systems due to its tamper-proof and distributed characteristics. Its distributed nature can break down departmental barriers and enable information sharing (Wu et al., 2023). Aung et al. (2014) defined traceability and traceability objectives, identified the driving factors for traceability in the food supply chain, analyzed the traceability requirements related to food safety and quality, and constructed a conceptual framework for a food traceability system. Lin et al. (2019) designed a food safety traceability system based on blockchain and EPCIS information services and provided a prototype system framework. Pearson et al. (2019) discussed the importance of food safety traceability. They designed a food supply chain using distributed ledger technology (DLT) based on blockchain, demonstrating the system architecture of the data flow from producers to end-users. Feng et al. (2020) reviewed the technical characteristics of blockchain technology and designed an architecture for a food traceability system based on blockchain technology, along with an applicability flowchart.