RFID technology traceability enhances the brand influence of rural chicken breeding industry

The application of RFID technology in the livestock industry mainly has two aspects. On the one hand, it is to establish a livestock management system for precision breeding of animals, and on the other hand, it is to establish an animal tracking and management system. More than 20 countries and regions around the world use RFID technology to track and trace food production processes, and have achieved good results.

The traceability system based on RFID identifies and connects the management objects in the supply chain links such as the growth of breeding animals, meat processing, storage and retail, and then expresses these identifications in barcodes and human readable ways. Once meat products have health and safety problems, these marks can be used to trace them, accurately narrow the scope of the safety problem, identify the link where the problem occurred, and trace the geographical location of the relevant place of production, slaughtering or processing institutions. In this way, the supply of goods from these places can be blocked from flowing into the market, and then effective management can be carried out.

Bu Bu Chicken Project

The chicken farm of the Bubu Chicken Project in Cha'an Town, Anhui Province is quite vast, and it is not a chicken farm in the traditional sense. Instead, a large area of land is designated for raising chickens.

The rural breeding industry has always been at the bottom of the industrial chain. The biggest constraint is the lack of trust between rural and urban areas caused by information asymmetry. Rural areas are unable to transform their green and pollution-free resources into brand advantages. Technologies such as blockchain and the Internet of Things can solve this problem.

For example, BuBu Chicken mainly solves the pain points of rural chicken farming: no sales channels, low profits, low brand influence, etc. BuBu Chicken has also developed concepts such as "making the chicken's life transparent and visible" and "blockchain poverty alleviation of free-range chickens". On the one hand, it improves the popularity of BuBu Chicken, and on the other hand, it also establishes sales channels to solve the problem of free-range chickens in rural areas. The difficulty of being unmarketable.

In addition to using blockchain and other technologies, the BuBu Chicken project also introduces agricultural insurance from property and casualty insurance companies to underwrite chicken breeding risks. Previously, when farmers purchased agricultural insurance for their chickens, risk assessors needed to check on-site how many breeding Assets they had and assess whether the chickens would die and how much income would be lost... Due to the high assessment process and cost, Farmers are not very enthusiastic about taking out insurance, and insurance companies are not enthusiastic about underwriting either.

The blockchain provides a new idea for agricultural insurance underwriting: Since farmers’ chickens use blockchain anti-counterfeiting traceability, how many chickens the farmer has raised and the mortality rate in the past three months... these data only need to be uploaded through the blockchain. The data can be known in real time, which reduces the risk control risks and evaluation costs of insurance and credit, and increases the enthusiasm of insurance companies for underwriting farmers and breeding assets.

In addition to agricultural insurance, based on the asset data on the blockchain, banks can conduct risk assessments for farmers’ loans, which also promotes the solution of agricultural loan problems, greatly reduces the threshold for entrepreneurial farmers to obtain financial services, and promotes the development of rural entrepreneurship.

Bubuji anti-counterfeiting traceability system

Bubuji anti-counterfeiting traceability system mainly includes three systems: data collection system, data storage and chaining system, and data verification system.

01Data collection system: Each chicken has a unique ID

The data collection system mainly relies on the ring-shaped snap-on IoT device (chicken tag) worn on the chicken leg to collect data (marked in red in the picture below). The chicken tag contains a pedometer module, a positioning module, a communication module, etc.

Each chicken tag will have a unique ID generated by the system and a QR code that can be scanned. Once the Chicken Card buckle is closed, it starts working and cannot be disassembled. Once disassembled, the electronic link device inside the buckle will be damaged, thereby losing the data collection function.

After the chicken card starts working mode, it will collect and upload the chicken's movement steps and coordinates in real time, and send them to the communication base station regularly. Communication base stations usually include a main base station and several sub-base stations. The sub-base stations are deployed in a grid and are responsible for collecting data information from chicken tags that are active near them, and summarizing the data and sending it to the main base station. The main base station will then send all messages to the message middleware. Since a large number of IoT devices may generate massive amounts of data content, message middleware can act as a flood reservoir here, shaving peaks and filling valleys.

02Data storage and chaining system: the content cannot be tampered with

The system needs to subscribe to the messages in the message middleware and Store and upload the messages.

Storage: Since the amount of data generated by IoT devices is very large, and the storage limitations of the blockchain itself prevent all data from being directly stored on the chain, an intermediate storage medium is needed to store the original data.

The intermediate storage medium can be a distributed File system (such as OSS, HDFS) or a decentralized file system (such as IPFS). When testing, you can also use the local file system. The system will regularly collect a certain amount of messages to generate files and store them on the file storage medium.

On-chain: The system will use the SHA-256 algorithm to perform data digest calculation on the stored file to obtain the digital signature of the file (since the digital signature of the file is a summary of the original content of the file, any modification to the original content of the file will result in new file signature).

The system then initiates a blockchain transaction and puts the file's storage path, file digital signature, and last transaction address (PreHash) into the transaction's remarks field for uploading. Once a blockchain transaction is confirmed by the consensus of each node, it will be broadcast and stored in the ledger of each node. The content stored in the transaction cannot be tampered with.

03Data query and verification system: scan the QR code to know the information

After consumers purchase chickens, they can query the entire life cycle information of the breeding product by scanning the chicken brand QR code on the chicken legs (or the RFID chip information in the sensing device), including entry time, number of steps, Coordinates, slaughter time, slaughter time, quarantine agency, logistics information, blockchain last transaction address (LastHash), etc.

Advantages of RFID technology in the livestock industry

RFID electronic identification management has been used in Europe and the United States for several years and has become a showcase of technology. In addition to its internal applications in automatic rationing and production statistics of breeding, it can also be used for animal identification, disease monitoring, quality control and tracking of animal species. The main advantages of RFID technology in the livestock industry include the following:

01 Non-contact identification, data collection is real-time and effective

RFID technology uses non-contact radio frequency identification to collect and systematically manage data from RFID electronic tags placed in or on animals. It is an extremely effective management method for understanding the health status of animals and controlling animal epidemics.

02 Waterproof, can be applied to animal bodies

The use of low-frequency RFID tags can penetrate water and animal bodies and is insensitive to water and metal. Whether the RFID tag is placed inside the animal or on the body, it can be read quickly and easily.

03 number is unique, difficult to forge, and easy to manage

The RFID electronic tag is placed on the animal when it is born. The RFID electronic tag is one-time use, uniformly numbered, and has a unique number. Through traceable management of individual animals, precision feeding is carried out to improve meat quality; at the same time, health warning and quality monitoring are carried out, which greatly increases the economic benefits of the enterprise.

04 Combined with information technology, it is conducive to tracking management

Through the supporting software management program, the entire growth cycle can be monitored. For example, whether it is stocked in a pollution-free natural environment, whether the water, soil, air and other indicators meet the standards, the use of veterinary drugs and additives, whether the feed has been contaminated by pesticides or residual additives, etc., and record where it was stocked in different periods. As well as important information such as their epidemic prevention situation and health status. When a food animal meets the standards for slaughter, the slaughterhouse will strictly check the "quality file" of the animal. Only after passing the strict inspection can it be slaughtered, and the "file" will be archived for future "quality traceability."