Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/26/lettuce-suppliers-must-join-wa.html
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iso-9000 meets crypto-wiz.
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Someone needs to remake this with the word blockchain instead of spam…
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Are lettuce producers that untrustworthy? They must be if Walmart is using blockchain as a solution here.
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Scoff all you want, but given the right conditions lettuce can be hazardous. This is what happens if you leave it overnight in the refrigerator too close to the bok choi:
We need tighter controls around ruffage roughage.
Edited for spelling, thanks @GulliverFoyle! I knew that looked wrong.
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Before the F-35 came along, the standard examples of ridiculous military spending were things like $500 hammers, and stuff.
Those were low-hanging fruit, plucked by people who didn’t mention to the public the expensive mandated purchasing process that tracked every component every step of the manufacturing process. If some equipment was going wrong, they needed to be able to find the shift on the assembly line in the factory that was installing the offog backwards, or the supplier that was screwing the troops with shoddy materials. Paperwork costs.money!
They’ve eliminated the paper, but I wonder how much a head of lettuce will cost when they’re done?
The last couple of years, there have been e-coli outbreaks that have taken forever to track down, even just to narrow down which state the contaminated stuff was coming from.
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I know about that, but a regular database would do the job just as well. Blockchain is a good solution for a very small set of problems where all three parties mutually distrust one-another (sometimes for valid non-shady reasons) but this doesn’t seem to be one of those problems.
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But you see, “blockchain” has marketing cachet. So regardless of suitability to purpose, putting “blockchain” in your X gets you attention and increases your company’s profile in the market for X.
Last century, it was “we have patented doing X with a computer.” Early this century, it was “do X on the internet.” Recently, it’s been “make all the X’s be able to get on the internet” (which has given us the internet of pwned things, sadly). The latest wave of bullshit is “put some blockchain in that X.”
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I would have assumed the same spelling you originally used. I suspect enough would that it’s a legitimate alternative spelling and not just a misspelling, but then I’m not the person you want to trust on correct spelling. 
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They handle some pretty dangerous stuff. You might not think a thing of iceberg is all that dangerous, but ask the people on the Titanic if they felt the same way.
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Came to say the same thing. If you have good chain-of-custody data, do you really need unbreakable cryptography to prove it’s good? Seems like all the people not getting sick and dying would be all the evidence you’d need.
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All those Bob and Alice cryptographic hypotheticals involve the international movement of lettuce.
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That makes using blockchain a bit more sensible, although Walmart has serious enough clout that there are other ways to control and intimidate bad actors.
Nah, that’s a frill…
this is a ruff:
[Sinks back into the pedant swamp.]
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I learn something new on BB every day. 
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oOg. I kind of feel like I should flag myself for derailing this topic with my terrible spelling.
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“This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of
paperlettuce, which was odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces ofpaperlettuce that were unhappy.”― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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