It has become a new, horrible norm. Our marine life is today being choked by a gathering minefield of plastic in our oceans, and the images make for stark viewing. A rainbow runner fish with a disturbing kaleidoscope of plastic bits in its liver. A mahi mahi fish with plastic bottle caps in its stomach. Or the mussels and clams, the filters of the sea, that harbour hidden microplastics, invisible to our naked eye.

Our first reaction to this news is often disgust. But this reflex quickly gives way to a more sobering thought: the far-reaching impact of the eight million metric tons of plastic pollution that enter our ocean every year. Not just proof of our mounting ecological misdeeds, this catastrophe also directly threatens to poison us where we are truly vulnerable: our plates.

The prospects of such a future impact how we shop for food. Last year, a European shopper survey conducted by the research firm McKinsey & Company, reconfirmed a long-known trend: quality food continues to be more important than price. In other words, shoppers deeply care about consuming safe food, and willingly demonstrate it with their wallets.

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The problem is that our modern industrial food network detaches us from any knowledge of our food’s origin. In a strange twist of fate, we have become unfathomably clueless in a world oversaturated by information.

That is all about to change. New technology is now bridging this information gap and returning the power of knowledge to consumers. By cataloguing the long trail of supply chain data on encrypted ledgers, the nebulous world of the global food network will be exposed. Shoppers will soon be able to follow the “story of the fish” – a report card enclosing the product’s original photo, place of catch, initial weight, species type, vessel and crew details, RFID tag number, catch water details and more.