The Business & Management Research Institute (BMRI) arranged a research seminar by Dr Kyle Alves (Senior Lecturer in Operations and Information Systems at the University of the West of England) in Luton on 05 December 2018.

The seminar was titled “Using Distributed Ledger Technology for More Robust Food Supply Chains - Applications in the Milk Chain”. Kyle introduced the emerging ideas of distributed ledgers and blockchain, with applications from his research projects on milk supply chains.

He explored the use of distributed ledger technology (DLT) to address some of the issues in proving the integrity, provenance and content of global and local food supply chains. The UK government aims to better understand food supply network safety using a holistic approach to create a “transparent and managed system” for food safety. He specifically highlighted the use of DLT to control the overuse of antibiotics leading potentially to antimicrobial resistance developing. He showed that the use of DLT could provide a visible assurance of activities and provenance along the supply chain, improving both transparency and assurance.

The seminar was attended by staff members, PGR students, MBA and taught Masters students in the business school.