**Background:** Livestock products account for more than 15% of global agri-food trade, and rising food demand has increased food safety risks. Traditional supply chains rely on paper-based or centralized digital records that are vulnerable to manipulation through falsified transit paperwork and invoices. Food fraud, mislabelling, contamination, and adulteration cause massive economic losses, and an estimated 600 million people (1 in 10 globally) fall ill from contaminated food annually. Food safety authorities demand complete traceability from farm to fork, but existing systems are inefficient and costly, especially during food recalls. The paper positions blockchain technology (BCT) as a potential solution to create tamper-proof, transparent, and decentralized traceability systems for livestock products.
**Methods:** This is a narrative review that synthesizes published literature, industry reports, and case studies on BCT applications in food supply chains, with a specific focus on livestock products. The paper explains BCT's technical foundations: blocks linked via cryptographic hash algorithms, consensus mechanisms (Proof of Work, Proof of Stake, and others), and blockchain classifications (public, private, permissioned). It reviews global pilot projects and commercial deployments involving pork, beef, poultry, dairy, seafood, and eggs. The authors also analyze current challenges to BCT adoption in the food sector.
**Key Results:** The paper reports that the global blockchain supply chain management market was predicted to grow from $45 million in 2018 to $3,314.6 million by 2023 (87% annual growth rate). Key pilot projects reviewed include: Walmart's 2016 initiative to monitor pork in China and produce from Latin America, which reduced traceability time from days to minutes; IBM Food Trust deployed by Walmart, Nestle, and Unilever; JD.com's Hyperledger Fabric-based beef traceability with Kerchin in 2017; Alibaba's trial with Blackmores and Fonterra; WWF's Pacific Islands tuna traceability project (2018); Carrefour's plan to adopt BCT for all Filiere Qualite Carrefour products by 2022; Bumble Bee Foods' seafood traceability with SAP (2019); and TE-FOOD's nationwide pork traceability system in Dong Nai, Vietnam (2022). The paper notes that only 14% of published agricultural blockchain studies address livestock products. The three-layer BCT traceability model is described: physical flow (food movement), digital record layer (sensors, RFID, QR codes), and blockchain infrastructure layer (smart contracts, consensus verification). Benefits identified include real-time contamination detection, rapid batch recall, reduced food fraud, immutable record-keeping, and enhanced consumer trust via QR code scanning.
**Clinical Implications:** While not a clinical study, the paper has public health implications. BCT-driven traceability could enable faster identification of foodborne illness sources during outbreaks, reducing the 600 million annual cases of foodborne illness. Real-time monitoring of temperature, humidity, and handling conditions during transport and storage could prevent microbial contamination of meat and dairy products. The technology could also help verify compliance with food safety standards (HACCP, Good Agricultural Practices, Good Manufacturing Practices) through automated smart contracts that reject non-compliant batches. However, the authors emphasize that BCT is currently practical only for high-value livestock products and large market players. Significant barriers include: high specialist costs, lack of farmer technical proficiency, need for training infrastructure, scalability and speed concerns, regulatory ambiguity around smart contract enforceability, industry reluctance to share private data, and lack of common standards across blockchain platforms. The paper calls for more real-world large-scale deployments, case studies to address barriers, and coordination between technical experts and policymakers to develop legal and regulatory frameworks.