DES MOINES, Iowa – The National Pork Board reached an agreement with Ripe Technology Inc. to pilot blockchain technology in the US pork industry.

Through the partnership, ripe.io will produce an ecosystem that will allow pork producers to monitor, evaluate and improve sustainability practices based on a We Care framework — six defined ethical principles guiding the US pork industry.

These principles provide industry standards in food safety and public health, animal well-being, protecting the environment and improving the quality of life for people in the industry and their communities.

“The growing demand across the entire food supply chain — including end consumers — is to ‘Know Your Food.’ The ripe.io platform generates powerful levels of transparency and trust by enabling collaboration and consensus of data and activities within food systems,” said Raja Ramachandran, co-founder of ripe.io. “Through blockchain, customers like the National Pork Board can enable its organization and members to create shared, immutable trusted records that address critical food issues such as sustainability, quality, traceability, waste and fraud.”

The National Pork Board plans to work with ripe.io to demonstrate to producers the value of responsible pork supply chain management. The two groups will combine sustainability data and activities on the company’s platform. The program should also help pork producers create a more sustainable environment and provide visible data to partners in the system to ensure valid certifications.

The partnership said the data remains anonymous in order to create a benchmark for ethical principle.

“Over the last 50 years, America's pig farmers have followed the We Care principles to produce a product that has become increasingly sustainable using 75 percent less land, 25 percent less water, and 7 percent less energy,” said Dr. Brett Kaysen, assistant vice president of sustainability at the National Pork Board. “We look forward to working with ripe.io to use blockchain technology to record proof points through a system that can benchmark performance while increasing transparency of the entire pork value chain.”