Agricultural Tech Firm and Logistics Veteran Join Forces to Assure Food Security
- Demand for transparent tracking and verification of sources of food is growing.
- UPS and HerdX successfully tracked and verified a beef shipment from Kansas to Japan.
Juicy rate beef steak with spices and a garnish of asparagus on a wooden board. Freepik
On Friday November 8, 2019 there was a celebratory mood at the Japanese embassy in Tokyo. The chimes in wine glasses and the infectious laughter signified the achievement of a new milestone – tracking and verifying food from farm to fork.
Global standards for verification and tracing have been sought after by technology companies, the government and academic institutions to no avail. Tracing and verification tools are increasing in demand because the consumer of food demands to know more about how it was grown, developed and finally how it was handled.
Two key drivers have enabled this solution to come to life – tracking & tracing technology (UPS) and integrated visibility tools (HerdX). The latter provides live updates and data points. Tracking and tracing technology improves quality assurance for beef products transported globally.
Romain Seguin, President of UPS Global Freight Forwarding, said that by upholding the quality assurance and traceability standards of their client HerdX, and getting it right despite the complexity of air freight shipments, assures the customer of growth moving forward.
Scannable QR codes provide the consumer with information of how beef made its way from the farm to the table. Using the UPS Temperature True Monitoring devices that are within the HerdX blockchain, the shipment’s temperature can be traced from origin to destination.
On the 4th of November the first beef shipment from Kansas to Japan was a success, because UPS customs brokers coordinated with health, food and safety regulators in the U.S. and Japan to get all certificates. This resulted in full compliance, timely clearance of the food and reduced risk of late delivery.
According to Seguin, it is a prime time for UPS to be entering the Japanese market with high-demand innovative solutions. Seguin hoped that UPS’s relationship with HerdX will promote a growth in UPS’s international shipping services to a wider clientele.
Ron Hicks, founder of HerdX, hailed the wide reach of UPS services that is now in more than 220 countries and territories. He mentioned that there is exponential scaling power that the partnership with UPS gives HerdX. Coupled with this are the opportunities that abound to the American cattle producer.
- The Japanese exchange has adopted new AML measures in order to comply with the Japanese governments implementation of FATF’s Travel Rule.
- Transaction restrictions will be applied to 21 countries that follow the Travel Rule, though transfers to countries not on the list will still be supported.
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- There is still no official date for when Binance will re-enter the Japanese market, but Sakura Exchange BitCoin (SEBC) will close doors on 31 May, and reopen as Binance Japan sometime after June.
- Customers in Japan who wished to continue using the exchange under the Binance name will have to undergo new identity verification and KYC checks.
- FTX Japan will resume customer crypto and fiat withdrawals, which will be processed through the Liquid Japan platform, tomorrow at noon local time.
- Users who do not have a Liquid Japan account will first need to create one before they are able to access their crypto assets.