Case study: Blockchain connection
To bring traceability to the consumer, Farmers Hen House has recently introduced a blockchain solution which shows the exact path the eggs took from the farm to the fridge. Ryan Miller, owner and CEO of Farmers Hen House explains: ‘We have put a QR code on our Free Range and Organic egg cartons which will lead consumers to a website where they can enter the lot code on an egg carton. This will not only show where the eggs come from but also the day that the eggs have been collected, when they were received at Farmers Hen House and when they were processed and packed. Very transparent and traceable and that is how our consumers like it.’ Ryan was positively surprised by the interest consumers showed during the pilot. ‘We are partnering with Bytable Foods* and Ovotrack in this project and they helped us to setup a pilot last year to see how this would work out. And we got way more consumer response than we expected.’
* unfortunately Bytable Foods closed per November 2022
‘Ovotrack was beneficial to our organization from day 1’
Explaining Ovotrack’ s role in this project, Ryan Miller continues: ‘We are working with Ovotrack since 2016 and it has been beneficial to our organization from day 1. However we were limited with our previous grader which was not able to communicate with systems like Ovotrack. Since we installed the Sanovo OptiGrader, last year in May, Ovotrack has been contributing even more. It links the pallet tickets that our farmers put the pallets to the traceability from the grading machine and that information is uploaded to the Bytable Blockchain platform.’
‘The Ovotrack solution is developed in an egg grading plant and that is probably why it is a very practical solution’
Ryan is happy with the cooperation with Ovotrack: ‘The Ovotrack solution is developed in an egg grading plant and that is probably why it is a very practical solution. And there is always something new with Ovotrack. We recently started with Ovotrack Egg Quality to record all quality checks we perform, we have this blockchain connection and we are in the process of changing our ERP software, which will interface with Ovotrack as well.’