**Directions: Read the given passage carefully to answer the following questions.
Each question will have five alternatives as its answer. Choose the correct option as your answer.**
In an era dominated by rapid urbanisation and industrialised supply chains, the concept of global food security has evolved far beyond mere crop availability; it now hinges critically on systemic safety, transparency, and nutritional integrity. Modern supermarkets are packed with heavily processed retail goods, yet everyday consumers are increasingly left in the dark. This is largely due to the rise of highly sophisticated, misleading advertisements that intentionally mask synthetic additives and harmful preservatives under the deceptive guise of "all-natural" healthy choices. To combat this growing information asymmetry, a new wave of digital intervention has emerged in the consumer market, primarily driven by mobile applications designed to scan ingredient labels and decode complex chemical compounds for the average shopper.
At the forefront of this modern technological crusade is Dr. Aris Thorne, a food scientist turned entrepreneur, who founded two distinct companies aimed at dismantling corporate opacity and protecting public health. His first venture, PureTrace, was designed as a consumer-centric mobile application that allowed users to scan barcodes to sort out harmful ingredients, hidden allergens, and toxic chemical dyes at the point of sale. While PureTrace successfully empowered the individual shopper, Dr. Thorne quickly realised that addressing the food crisis at the retail end was merely treating the symptom rather than the root cause. This critical realisation set in motion his second, far more ambitious venture: a __________ company named BlueTick.
Unlike PureTrace, which functioned purely as a reactive tool for cautious consumers, BlueTick was established to standardise the quality of food at the agricultural and processing levels, long before the products ever reached retail shelves. BlueTick utilises advanced blockchain ledgers and high-resolution spectrometry to identify chemical contamination, tracking food products from farm to fork. While PureTrace relied heavily on public awareness to pressure profit-driven manufacturers, BlueTick enforces systemic accountability by certifying whole supply chains. This dual-company approach highlights a fundamental truth in modern food safety: public scanning applications mean well and raise vital consumer awareness, but true food security is entirely impossible without institutional mechanisms explicitly telling us exactly where the contamination began. Ultimately, protecting what we eat requires both digital vigilance at the supermarket shelves and strict backend enforcement across global logistics.