RFID Tags to Track Your Food

Angry_Admin writes "According to the article at IT World Canada, 'Recent food security scares have triggered public outcries and intense concern. People want to know exactly what is in their food, and what is done to it by whom. In response, Canada and many other countries are introducing traceability requirements - records that track all links in the food supply chain, from farmers to processors to retailers to consumers. The Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada agency recently released a policy framework, stating the goal is to make 80 per cent of all food products traceable by 2008.'"

Comments

this isn't the only problem with the food chain!

[yagu]

What's missing in this picture is some approach that makes food safe, period. While it's laudable to want to have our long arms of the law around the whole food chain of command, it hardly addresses (in my opinion) real evil, and general detriment to the humanity collective health. There are products and chemicals in food today that for various percentages of the population cause severe side effects, and potentially (probably) are more dangerous than the highly publicized "contamination" food issues.

If you want an example of one good read about just one chemical (MSG, introduced in many nefarious and hidden forms to our foods), read and branch out on this site .

The RFID idea doesn't address:

• artificial sweeteners (I am one of the "urban myth" people who gets excruciating migraines if I ingest nutrasweet.)
• synthesized fats (olestra?) (make sure you're keeping track of the nearest available rest rooms!)
• MSG (see above) (and read the referenced site, you're likely to be surprised -- the biggest surprise for me was how many different forms MSG takes, i.e., what amounts to MSG can take forms in which the manufacturer is not required to label it. Even more insidious, they can label their product "MSG Free"!)
• preservatives
• salts (I'm just guessing, but if you take common foods (mainstream), and by the time you ate the RDA calorie-wise, the sodium that came along for the ride would exceed the RDA by at least a factor of 2)

I see what this article talks about as useful in some sense, but the sum total malaise caused by contamination of our food supply with weird (and to many, unknown) chemicals outpaces, outweighs, and almost trumps the money that would be spent on a massive RFID program.