Food industry blockchain pioneer Ripe Technology is teaming up with the food and animal safety giant Neogen to integrate innovative blockchain technology with Neogen’s food safety diagnostics and animal genomics. This will help create a history of products and animals as they go through their entire production cycles.
Neogen CEO John Adent stated:
“Blockchain has tremendous potential throughout the food and livestock industries, both to verify the authenticity of premium products, such as cage-free eggs, and enhance the traceability of issues that require correction, such as those that lead to product recalls.”
“Blockchain technology has a lot to offer both our food safety diagnostic and animal genomic customers, as the technology permanently connects a tremendous amount of potentially critical data, including results from Neogen’s tests, to a food product or animal. There are countless potential benefits to adopting the technology. For example, the genomic profile of a dairy cow could be connected with the feed the animal eats, its medical history, barn environment, quantity and quality of the milk it produces, etc. Blockchain can serve to optimize the entire supply chains of many of the markets that Neogen serves.”
“ripe.io is the perfect partner for us as we work to adapt the technology to our industry,” Adent continued.
“They have real-life experience with working with food producers, food distributors, restaurants and food retailers — all key market segments for us.”
“We are extremely excited that Neogen selected us as their blockchain and ledger technology partner,” said Raja Ramachandran, ripe.io’s chief executive officer. “Neogen’s diagnostics and DNA expertise can add the highest degree of transparency and factual correctness for critical issues around authenticity and accuracy on food recalls. We believe this will change the game in food transparency for improved quality assessment from the beginning of the supply chain all the way to consumers.”
The blockchain technology will be initially separate from Neogen’s recently announced Neogen Analytics platform but when fused the company believes the two technologies can form the basis for advanced data-driven decisions for its customers.
Neogen Analytics is an innovative platform that will enable Neogen customers to automate food safety workflows, and continuously monitor and analyze food risk data generated by the company’s food safety diagnostic products. By automating and connecting multiple data points through diagnostic testing in a production facility, the food safety data analytics platform enables food producers and processors to harness their data to create a holistic picture around areas of risk that can guide operational decisions.
Neogen has a market cap of $1.83 billion and operates a product line of over 100 drug detection test kits worldwide for the detection of about 300 abused and therapeutic drugs in animal treatment.
The company operates its business through two segments including Food Safety and Animal Safety.
Neogen’s Food Safety Division is primarily engaged in the production and marketing of diagnostic test kits and complementary products marketed to food and feed producers and processors to detect dangerous and/or unintended substances in food and animal feed, such as foodborne pathogens, spoilage organisms, natural toxins, food allergens, genetic modifications, meat speciation, drug residues, pesticide residues and general sanitation concerns.
Neogen’s Animal Safety Division is primarily engaged in the development, manufacture and marketing of veterinary instruments, pharmaceuticals, vaccines, topicals, diagnostic products, a full suite of agricultural biosecurity products, such as rodenticides, cleaners, disinfectants and insecticides and genomics services.
