FOOD SAFETY Wal-Mart CEO Doug McMillon welcomes guests to the Food Safety Collaboration Center in Beijing. Wal-Mart collaborates with IBM on food safety traceability projects in China and the US BY E R I C A S H A FFE R | e s h a f f e r @ s o s l a n d.c o m O n Oct. 19, 2016, Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. opened the Walmart Food Safety Collaboration Center in Beijing. The center's opening signals a commitment to unite food safety experts and industry stakeholders tasked with improving food safety in China. Initiatives will focus on several areas, including analyzing root causes of foodborne illness and developing scalable solutions to implement across the food supply chain in China. Wal- 66 MEAT+ POULTRY | 02.17 | www.meatpoultry.com Mart and the Wal-Mart Foundation plan to invest $25 million over five years to support research projects. One of the projects employs a blockchain, which is technology that has been used mostly in the financial services industry. Pilot projects developed by Wal-Mart, IBM and Tsinghua Univ. will use blockchain technology for the benefit of food safety in China with the goal of bringing traceability and transparency to the country's pork supply chain logistics. Walmart The blockchain ganghttp://www.meatpoultry.com