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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Hawaii working to link its food chain
  • Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:41:45 -0600


Hawaii working to link its food chain
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080415/ap_on_re_us/farm_scene_tracking_produce;_ylt=Ahnn7K40x621nscVoFdJ9OzVJRIF

By JAYMES SONG, Associated Press Writer Tue Apr 15, 2:51 AM ET

HONOLULU - A technology used to track everything from cattle and bottles of
Viagra to U.S. military weapons will soon be tested on an unlikely candidate
for surveillance: tomatoes.

The Hawaii Department of Agriculture will rollout a three-year pilot project
this month to track and trace tomatoes and other produce using radio
frequency identification (RFID) technology. The system uses microchips with
paper-thin antennae stuck onto produce boxes that emit radio waves when
scanned.

While the technology is already being used by a few supermarkets and farms
across the nation, Hawaii would be the first state to test RFID from farm to
market in hopes of improving food safety.

Sandra Lee Kunimoto, chairwoman of the Hawaii Board of Agriculture, said the
ability to determine where food comes from and where it has been distributed
will become even more important as the food supply continues to be globalized.

In the event of a recall, the state wants to be able to trace a product to
the farm of origin and identify where inventories were sent, all within a few
minutes.

The state said the system will help improve quality and freshness as well as
create a database of all produce being shipped and sold.

Four farms across Hawaii — from a small farm on the Big Island to a
2,000-acre multi-crop operation on Oahu — will soon tag boxes and pallets of
everything from lettuce to strawberries.

John Ryan, administrator for the program at the state Agriculture Department,
said he hopes that costs will eventually come down to a point where RFID
would be adopted by many of the 5,000 farms in Hawaii, and beyond.

"Our goal here really is to develop a model that hopefully many other states
can use," he said.

Ryan said fruits and vegetables could one day be tagged with tiny RFID labels
with ID numbers that would allow consumers to access information through the
state's online database.

The state is partnering with Motorola Inc., Lowry Computer Products Inc. and
GlobeRanger Inc. The state is also working with the University of Hawaii to
develop bio-sensors that could test for contaminants, such as E. coli and
salmonella.

Joe White, a vice president in Motorola's RFID division in Maryland, said
there was growing interest worldwide, especially from Europe and Asia, in
tracking produce.

The technology dates to World War II, when Britain put transponders in Allied
aircraft to help radar crews distinguish them from German fighters. In 2003,
the U.S. Department of Defense and Wal-Mart mandated that suppliers radio tag
all crates and cartons, giving RFID a major boost.

Katherine Albrecht, co-author of "Spychips" and founder of CASPIAN, an
anti-RFID group, said she's not against using RFID to track produce in bulk.
However, the possibility of tagging individual fruits and vegetables raises
serious consumer privacy issues.

"It's crossing the line in the sand. Once you begin seeing them appear on
individual consumer items, you open up a whole Pandora's Box to track
individuals," she said.

The state says it's all an effort to improve food safety standards, not to
track people or eating habits.

In March 2007, eight people in Hawaii were sickened with E. coli after
consuming contaminated lettuce. It took months for health officials to
pinpoint the source, a Kauai farm that had been flooded by stormwater runoff
from a nearby cattle pasture.

An E. coli outbreak in 2006 killed three people and sickened hundreds
nationwide before the bacteria was traced back to contaminated spinach from
Central California.

In its trial, the state is supplying the RFID labels, which currently cost
about 17 cents apiece and handheld readers that run nearly $3,000 each.

Ryan predicts the cost of the passive tags eventually will drop to a few
pennies.





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