Retailer Carrefour using blockchain to improve checks on food products

* To expand blockchain food traceability to 8 other products

* Blockchain already used on tracing chicken production

* Nestle, Unilever and others also using blockchain

* Carrefour eyeing organic food sales boost in 5-year plan

By Dominique Vidalon

PARIS, March 6 (Reuters) - Retailer Carrefour ishoping blockchain-based technology will improve checks on thestandards of its food products, as it prepares a major overhaulto tackle competition from Amazon, Leclerc and others.

Carrefour is among several leading companies tapping intothe growing use of blockchain in order to track where productscome from, as consumers increasingly look to ensure thatproducts meet standards regarding ethics and general safety.

Carrefour, Europe's largest retailer, said on Tuesday thatthe use of blockchain would enable shoppers in France to tracewhere certain food products are sourced, and added it wasextending its use of such technology in this capacity.

Blockchain, which first emerged as the system underpinningthe cryptocurrency Bitcoin, is a shared record of data kept by anetwork of computers, rather than a trusted third party.

Last year, Nestle, Unilever, Tyson Foodsand other large food and retail companies joined an IBMproject to explore how blockchain technology can helptrack food supply chains and improve safety.

BMW and a London-based start-up company also saidthis week they would use blockchain to prove batteries for itselectric vehicles only contain clean cobalt.

Carrefour will extend the use of blockchain to honey, eggs,cheese, milk, oranges, tomatoes, salmon and hamburgers byend-2018. It currently uses the blockchain programme to tracethe production of free-range chicken in the Auvergne region incentral France.

Consumers can use a smartphone to scan a code on the packageto obtain information at each stage of production, includingwhere and how the chickens were raised and what they were fed aswell as where the meat was processed, added the French company.

Carrefour is also currently conducting blockchain tests toimprove tracing the source of food products in China and couldexpand it to other countries.

Alexandre Bompard, who took over as Carrefour's CEO in July,unveiled in January a five-year plan to boost profits and sales.

The plan entails overhauling Carrefour's French hypermarketsand expanding online operations, with a pledge to invest 2.8billion euros ($3.5 billion) in digital commerce by 2022.

The group, which has struggled for years to become lessreliant on its French hypermarkets, has promised to revamp itsrange of food, as customers demand healthier products.

Carrefour is targeting 5 billion euros in organic food salesby 2022, compared to 1 billion euros generated at present.

($1 = 0.8101 euros)(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon;Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)