ZhongAn Technology at the Computing Conference 2017 demonstrated how customers can read the life story of a chicken like an open book with the help of the blockchain technology.

A customer wearing VR glasses catches a chicken and reads all data about it by scanning the QR code at its feet.

ZhongAn Technology announced partnership with blockchain startup Opentrust to initiate the project “bubuji”, (literally meaning “step-by-step chickens”, or traceable chickens).

At present, the project intends to work with over 200 chicken farms in Anhui, Henan, Hainan and other provinces around China. And it aims to make “bubuji” available to 2,500 chicken farms by the end of 2020.

At Shou county, Anhui Province-the first station of the project, chicken farms utilize the blockchain technology along with artificial intelligence and anti-counterfeiting technology to offer each chicken a tag, or a unique identifier.

The tag automatically collects data about a chicken’s location, physical movement and upload such information onto blockchain. And the tag cannot be duplicated with the adoption of anti-counterfeiting technology. One chicken, one tag. Dismantlement is destruction.

As data recorded on blockchain is untampered and irreversible, customers will be able to trace all data throughout processes from a baby chick to an adult, from the chicken farm to the dining table to fight against fraud.

Statistics show that Chicken is Chinese people’s all-time favorite food, followed by pork. Chinese eat 5 billion chickens per year which fuels up technological progress in raising chicken.

One of the many reasons to raise chicken with the blockchain technology is that consumers tend to buy a whole chicken instead of a part of it. If it were a pig, it’s almost impossible to trace which pig this part of pork come from.

Secondly, chickens live a rather simple life. They cannot fly, nor can they swim, and thus ensure the proper functioning of the tag.

Founded in 2016, Zhongan technology is a wholly owned subsidiary of Zhongan Online P&C Insurance. It launched the first blockchain and AI-based clouding platform Anlink this May to promote and share the latest tech breakthroughs.