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.'"Ads_xl=0;Ads_yl=0;Ads_xp='';Ads_yp='';Ads_xp1='';Ads_yp1='';Ads_par='';Ads_cnturl='';Ads_prf='page=article';Ads_channels='RON_P6_IMU';Ads_wrd='privacy,hardware';Ads_kid=0;Ads_bid=0;Ads_sec=0; RFID Tags to Track Your Food Log in/Create an Account | Top | 114 comments | Search Discussion Display Options Threshold: -1: 114 comments 0: 113 comments 1: 88 comments 2: 57 comments 3: 18 comments 4: 9 comments 5: 6 comments Flat Nested No Comments Threaded Oldest First Newest First Highest Scores First Oldest First (Ignore Threads) Newest First (Ignore Threads) The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way. hmmmmph ... (Score:5, Funny) by Average_Joe_Sixpack (534373) on Saturday October 15, @02:45PM (#13798255) Why is my Big Mac linking back to a horse farm?? [ Reply to ThisLOL by Bulmakau (Score:1) Saturday October 15, @02:55PM3 replies beneath your current threshold.Re:hmmmmph ... by rob_squared (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @03:47PMRe:hmmmmph ... by VikingDBA (Score:1) Saturday October 15, @05:24PMHow Far Back? by nick_davison (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @06:49PMRe:hmmmmph ... by cnerd2025 (Score:1) Saturday October 15, @09:26PMRe:hmmmmph ... by RexRhino (Score:2) Sunday October 16, @12:09AM this isn't the only problem with the food chain! (Score:5, Insightful) by yagu (721525) * <yayagu@gmail.com> on Saturday October 15, @02:45PM (#13798256) (Last Journal: Friday October 14, @01:20PM) 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 wholefood chain of command, it hardly addresses (in my opinion) real evil, andgeneral detriment to the humanity collective health. There are products andchemicals in food today that for various percentages of the population causesevere side effects, and potentially (probably) are moredangerous than the highly publicized "contamination" food issues.If you want an example of one good read about just one chemical (MSG, introducedin many nefarious and hidden forms to our foods), read and branch out on this site [truthinlabeling.org].The RFID idea doesn't address: artificial sweeteners (I am one of the "urban myth" people who getsexcruciating migraines if I ingest nutrasweet.)synthesized fats (olestra?) (make sure you're keeping track of the nearest availablerest 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., whatamounts to MSG can take forms in which the manufacturer is not required to labelit. Even more insidious, they can label their product "MSG Free"!)preservativessalts (I'm just guessing, but if you take common foods (mainstream), andby the time you ate the RDA calorie-wise, the sodium that came along for the ridewould 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 totalmalaise 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 ona massive RFID program. [ Reply to ThisRe:this isn't the only problem with the food chain by ip_freely_2000 (Score:3) Saturday October 15, @03:04PMRe:this isn't the only problem with the food chain by toddbu (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @03:24PMRe:this isn't the only problem with the food chain by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Saturday October 15, @03:11PMRe:this isn't the only problem with the food chain by yagu (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @03:33PM I disagree (Score:4, Insightful) by Infonaut (96956) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Saturday October 15, @03:15PM (#13798393) (http://slashdot.org/~Infonaut/journal | Last Journal: Wednesday October 12, @01:02PM) 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. Tracking food is very useful when your distribution system is so bad that people are starving because the food isn't making it to market. Talking about the corruption of the food supply is a luxury afforded only to those who have enough food in the first place. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:this isn't the only problem with the food chain by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Saturday October 15, @03:25PM Re:this isn't the only problem with the food chain (Score:5, Informative) by Mashdar (876825) on Saturday October 15, @03:36PM (#13798500) While I will grant that there may be some ingredients in common food products which negatively affect the health of certain individuals to a reasonable extent, I must disagree with you on your claim that MSG is, in fact, a harmful substance (to anyone).First, let us look at the structure of it. MSG stands for Monosodium Glutamate. It is a salt consisting of a single (mono) sodium ion (Na+) attached to a glutamate ion. Clearly you cannot be alergic to sodium, but what about glutamate?Glutamate [wikipedia.org], the molecule produced when MSG is dissolved (along with the sodium ion), is required for proper functioning of any animal I've ever studied. It is a neurotransmitter (the principal one used in sight, actually, so if you lacked it you would be blind). It is naturally occuring in the body, and the body is designed to naturally convert glutamate outside of the central nervous system into L-glutamate, which the brain and muscles use for energy. The body produces large ammounts of free glutamate all the time. The point is, if you were alergic to glutamate you would be dead.But perhaps the above was not convincing enough... Maybe the glutamate from MSG changes the body's glutamate concentration somehow (which it does not). It just so happens that many of the foods people eat on a regular basis are very MSG rich. Do you like parmesan cheese? It contains roughly 1.2 grams of MSG for every cubic centimeter. That is huge! MSG exists in almost any food you eat (brocolli .25g/cm^3, corn .13g/cm^3), and the average american eats roughly 20 grams of it a day. Of that 20 grams, only about 1.5 grams is artificially produced! Glutamate is actually responsible for an entire realm of taste [wikipedia.org].Double blind study after double blind study has shown that those claiming alergies to MSG were, in fact, either placeboing or alergic to something else. In chinese cooking (notorius for MSG content), several vegetables and spices are used which people would rarely come in contact with in other settings. Several of these are known to be alergenic, and many individuals find themselves blaming MSG for their allergies to other substances.To boot, MSG is actually healthier for you than the alternative. With MSG you can cut down the sodium content of food drastically. The negative health affects of large sodium intake are real, and MSG is one of the ways that food producers can limit sodium content without cutting back on flavor. The FDA lists MSG as "Generally Regocnized as Safe" [wikipedia.org], the same category as sodium chloride (table salt) and sodium bicarbonate (baking powder).I love looking at a can of spaghetti-Os... It happily advertises "NO MSG" above the nutrition information, but it contains a whopping 1.78 grams of sodium per 15oz can. It also happens to contain a cheese culture (read MSG rich). Hooray for destroying the elasticity of your arteries! Just avoid those evil artificial salts that are, in fact, naturally occuring in everything you eat anyway.(please excuse the sole use of wiki, but I cannot link my text books) [ Reply to This | ParentHis problem isn't ours. by Kadin2048 (Score:3) Saturday October 15, @04:37PM2 replies beneath your current threshold.Re:this isn't the only problem with the food chain by drinkypoo (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @03:52PMRe:this isn't the only problem with the food chain by tolkienfan (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @04:29PMRe:this isn't the only problem with the food chain by Kadin2048 (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @04:50PMRe:this isn't the only problem with the food chain by tolkienfan (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @05:09PMRe:this isn't the only problem with the food chain by Seraphim_72 (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @06:59PMRe:this isn't the only problem with the food chain by tzanger (Score:1) Saturday October 15, @03:53PMRe:this isn't the only problem with the food chain by tolkienfan (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @04:09PMRe:this isn't the only problem with the food chain by badboy_tw2002 (Score:3) Saturday October 15, @04:09PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:this isn't the only problem with the food chain by lysergic.acid (Score:1) Saturday October 15, @04:13PMRe:this isn't the only problem with the food chain by gwait (Score:1) Saturday October 15, @06:43PM But won't RFID tags (Score:5, Funny) by Kizzle (555439) on Saturday October 15, @02:45PM (#13798257) be kinda hard to chew? [ Reply to ThisRe:But won't RFID tags by pete-classic (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @03:01PMRe:But won't RFID tags by myowntrueself (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @03:21PMRe:But won't RFID tags by Antique Geekmeister (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @11:27PM2 replies beneath your current threshold. Genetic Engineering... (Score:3, Insightful) by michaelzhao (801080) on Saturday October 15, @02:45PM (#13798259) With all the genetic engineering in our food nowadays... an apple will probably look something like this when traced by RFID 1 Apple= 75% Apple, 10% Orange, 5% Pear, 10% Random Genetic Code [ Reply to ThisRe:Genetic Engineering... by WilliamSChips (Score:1) Saturday October 15, @02:59PMRe:Genetic Engineering... by nogginthenog (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @03:06PM Finally! (Score:1) by dorkygeek (898295) on Saturday October 15, @02:46PM (#13798263) It was about time!I just hope that the next time I drag a cow out of a shop the alarm doesn't go off. [ Reply to This People want to know exactly what is in their food (Score:2, Interesting) by iminplaya (723125) on Saturday October 15, @02:51PM (#13798284) I'll believe that when they demand proper labeling for GM contamination and other artificial ingredients. [ Reply to ThisRe:People want to know exactly what is in their fo by Bogtha (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @03:45PMRe:People want to know exactly what is in their fo by iminplaya (Score:1) Saturday October 15, @05:07PMOpen source food? by milktoastman (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @04:00PMRe:People want to know exactly what is in their fo by _Ludwig (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @05:12PMRe:People want to know exactly what is in their fo by martinX (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @07:55PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.1 reply beneath your current threshold. Scares? (Score:1) by Seumas (6865) on Saturday October 15, @02:51PM (#13798285) What recent food security scares? I'm pretty sure I'd see something sensational about it on FOX if there were any and I have not. [ Reply to This Please note: (Score:3, Informative) by saskboy (600063) on Saturday October 15, @02:52PM (#13798293) (http://www.abandonedstuff.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday October 13, @03:34PM) The RFID tags are not going to be in the food you eat, rather they are in the packaging the food comes in. This presents a problem for things like fruit, since now you might only be able to buy fruit and veggies from a store if they are already in a bag, or in a specific bag with the right ID tag.It is not a ploy to get you to swallow tags so your toilet can analyse your leavings, like in the recent hit movie "The Island".Canadian ranchers are also working on getting every cow RFID tagged, and testing each one for BSE before it goes to market. [ Reply to ThisCow tags? Aren't ear tags sufficient? by davidwr (Score:1) Saturday October 15, @03:05PMRe:Cow tags? Aren't ear tags sufficient? by Kadin2048 (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @05:06PMRe:Cow tags? Aren't ear tags sufficient? by VikingDBA (Score:1) Saturday October 15, @07:10PM You get sick after drinking bad milk... (Score:1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 15, @02:54PM (#13798300) Enter the latitude/longitude from the RFID into your GPS and go beat the crap out of the cow that produced the milk yourself! [ Reply to This New waiter jokes (Score:4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 15, @02:55PM (#13798304) "Waiter, my salad apparently passed through 3 Mile Island, may I have another?""Certainly, Madame. Please allow me to light your candle as an alternate light source.""Waiter, why did my hamburger pass through Mecca?""To go on Hajj. It was a very devout cow.""Waiter, why was my pork chop processed in L.A.?""Suffice it to say, monsieur, that many applicants for the part of 'Babe the Pig' did not get cast.""Manager, why does the General Tso's chicken say that it passed through Daytona Beach?""Well, it wanted to get some Spring Break...er...nevermind." [ Reply to This food is temporary (Score:3, Insightful) by Barbarian (9467) on Saturday October 15, @02:56PM (#13798317) Well it's not so bad for food. If it was clothing, or books, there are privacy problems definitely--you are going to generally wear clothes a lot, so if there is a db of which you have bought you can be tracked. Same with books, you either buy them or are going to borrow them from the library. However food you are probably going to just take home, and toss the packaging when you're done. What food you eat is already tracked thanks to those loyalty card programs. [ Reply to This I'm as concerned... (Score:3, Interesting) by Mistshadow2k4 (748958) on Saturday October 15, @02:56PM (#13798318) (Last Journal: Friday October 14, @07:06AM) ... about the drugs they give cattle and other animals raised for food. I've done searches for web sites to tell me what these drugs are and found very little information. It would sure be nice if someone were to try to track all that and tell us what these drugs are, what they're supposed to do, and how much research has been done to see how traces of them might affect humans. [ Reply to ThisRe:I'm as concerned... by 00_NOP (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @03:23PM People want to know exactly what is in their food (Score:5, Insightful) by dangerz (540904) <dzas@@@dangerz...net> on Saturday October 15, @02:58PM (#13798326) (http://www.tildastudios.com/) Huh? Where are these 'people'? People don't give two craps about anything, let alone where their food has been.If people really wanted to know what's in their food, chains like McDonalds wouldn't be in business. [ Reply to ThisRe:People want to know exactly what is in their fo by GameMaster (Score:3) Saturday October 15, @03:05PMRe:People want to know exactly what is in their fo by RexRhino (Score:2) Sunday October 16, @12:03AM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:People want to know exactly what is in their fo by ddx Christ (Score:1) Saturday October 15, @03:29PMRe:People want to know exactly what is in their fo by kfg (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @03:38PMRe:People want to know exactly what is in their fo by cliffski (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @04:01PM RFID is NOT required for tracking (Score:1) by davidwr (791652) on Saturday October 15, @03:01PM (#13798342) (Last Journal: Thursday October 06, @07:18PM) I should say PER-ITEM RFID is NOT required for tracking. RFIDs are expensive - a few pennies each at best. Printing a serial number on each item can be much much cheaper.All that is required is a way to track each box or crate from creation to store, and serial number for each package or item.You put the RFID tags on the pallets or crates (they can be scanned from a distance), and print the lot# and serial# on the box and item. Make the lot# part of the serial# and you have built-in recordkeeping.For non-packaged foods like fruit, edible ink or stick-on labels are the way to go for the serial numbers.This may not work well with items like bananas, where the "item" is the bunch but customers routinely split up bunches.Now all that's required is a way to actually TRACK the items as they leave the store. For items costing more than a few dollars, RFID may be the cheapest way to go. For small items like a stick of gum, it may not be worth tracking. But if it is, scanning a printed serial number is doable, albeit at a non-trivial cost to retailers to replace or upgrade their check-out equipment.Personally, I think whoever came up with this requirement should do a cost-benefit analysis before mandating it on anyone. [ Reply to This Mmm... (Score:1) by Trip Ericson (864747) on Saturday October 15, @03:05PM (#13798354) (http://www.rabbitears.info/) Crunchy. BZZT! And shocking. [ Reply to This Great (Score:5, Funny) by Comatose51 (687974) on Saturday October 15, @03:09PM (#13798369) Great, now that we know where our food has been no one will ever go out to a restaurant again. There are some things in life that's best kept a mystery, like why you can never replicate that taste at home in your kitchen. [ Reply to ThisRe:Great by drinkypoo (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @03:58PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Not here (Score:2) by davmoo (63521) on Saturday October 15, @03:19PM (#13798406) This won't happen any time soon in the US. And here's why I say that.This past session, there was a bill in both sides of Congress that would have required all meat products to be labled as to their country of origin, etc. The industry lobby made sure the bill died. Apparently us 'mericans are too damned stupid to be trusted with such information. They don't want us to know where the meat in our burgers come from. [ Reply to ThisRe:Not here by HermanAB (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @04:46PMit is already here. by VikingDBA (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @07:46PM Just don't swallow one: (Score:1) by ohmypolarbear (774072) on Saturday October 15, @03:27PM (#13798452) In Canadian McDonald's, FOOD tracks YOU! [ Reply to This Already widespread in Japan (Score:3, Informative) by sakusha (441986) on Saturday October 15, @03:27PM (#13798456) This system is already implemented widely in Japan. There have been several panics about food poisoning in various types of fresh vegetables, which is usually associated with specific batches from specific farms, but the panic causes drops in sales of all vegetables of that type. To confine the panic and the sales losses somewhat, there is a new system to track food products to the source. In some stores, you can go up to a barcode reader and get the details of the packaged product's origin. Seems like a good idea to me, especially after some of the recent tainted food scandals in Japan (you don't want to know). [ Reply to ThisRe:Already widespread in Japan by zippthorne (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @03:38PMRe:Already widespread in Japan by sakusha (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @03:47PMRe:Already widespread in Japan by smashin234 (Score:2) Saturday October 15, @06:27PMRe:Already widespread in Japan by ephex (Score:1) Saturday October 15, @08:00PM The American Farmer Will Suffer (Score:1) by bobsacks (784382) on Saturday October 15, @03:28PM (#13798457) (Last Journal: Sunday November 21, @01:23AM) This will cuase tons of problems for the small to medium size american farmer. They are trying to do the same thing with cattle. This has the potential to cause many americans to loose their ways of life. Farming is already a negative growth industry, and prices are still near those of the 1950's. If you start adding in tons more cost to the process, many of these small family businesses will go belly up and the people running them will loose the only thing they have ever known to do. [ Reply to This More of a privacy threat than people realize. (Score:2, Interesting) by Short Circuit (52384) * <mikemol AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday October 15, @03:38PM (#13798516) (http://citygen.org/ | Last Journal: Friday September 30, @07:42PM) I know people who choose where they shop based on where the store gets their goods, trying to only buy from stores that buy their goods from local farmers and other local businesses. In a sense, they're low-key activists.But, in a statistical sense, their being activists at all makes them more likely to commit crimes that fall under that "terrorism" term. If food purchasing patterns were to be fed into a program like CAPPS II, they would be more likely to be singled out for harassment at checkpoints such as those in airports.Even thoroughly-tracked lot IDs would serve to illuminate a connection between these people and the locality of the purchases they make. [ Reply to This Oh great. (Score:2) by wootest (694923) on Saturday October 15, @04:17PM (#13798761) Because if there's one thing we really need to know, it's where that fly in our soup has been prior to landing there. [ Reply to This Belgium ~8 years ago (Score:4, Interesting) by Councilor Hart (673770) on Saturday October 15, @04:34PM (#13798841) There was a huge scandal concerning the use of motor oil in animal food. For over a week all chicken and milk related food were banned from the stores.It made everyone so worried for the next few months, that some school kid fainted when smelling a bad odour in a coca cola. It caused half the school to feel sick. They had to be hospitalised. So there went all the coke out of the stores. New caps on the bottle to denote newly bottled ones, everyone (~10 million people) a free bottle) and a coca cola CEO appearing on national television making an apology, but who had to resign a few weeks later anyway. (Hey, per capita we are one hell of a coke lovers)Now the funny thing is, that they tested that coke bottle the kid drank. Nothing wrong it. Conclusion: mass hysteria But then again, a few months earlier we did eat all that motor oil. [ Reply to This Crunchy... (Score:2) by HermanAB (661181) on Saturday October 15, @04:42PM (#13798875) Hmm, who is going to pay my dentist bill for biting on the RF ID Tags? [ Reply to This The EU is ahaead of the pack here... (Score:1) by raarts (5057) * on Saturday October 15, @05:31PM (#13799062) On the 28th of January 2002 the European Parliament and the Council adopted Regulation (EC)178/2002 laying down the General Principles and requirements of Food Law.The General Food Law [eu.int] mandates tracking and tracing of all food produced in the EU.And as far as I know the Dutch [dymos.nl] are leading within Europe. [ Reply to This Everyone Knows Where Meat Comes From... (Score:2) by Doc Ruby (173196) on Saturday October 15, @06:47PM (#13799354) (http://slashdot.org/~Doc%20Ruby/journal | Last Journal: Thursday March 31, @02:48PM) ...It comes from the store.The agriculture dealers already run complete Supply Chain Management. They don't need RFID to track these food packets. This is just an RFID publicity stunt, exploiting people's fear of recent food product unsafety problems. Rather than fix the cannibalistic cycle of feeding animal byproducts back to the same species, which amplifies diseases - even tiny disease signals like previously innocuous prions - they're throwing RFID at it. Which makes it even more manageable to entrench that cycle, while propagandizing RFID as something that protects people. The natural PR move after that is to cash in on "RFID goodwill" by putting RFID on everything, then on everyone, in the name of security. They've sold us a bill of goods, and we're swallowing it. [ Reply to This they want to know (Score:2) by roman_mir (125474) on Saturday October 15, @07:54PM (#13799682) (http://russkey.mozdev.org/ | Last Journal: Monday December 08, @12:44PM) want to know exactly what is in their food - I am telling you what: RFID tags! [ Reply to This Holy Cow (Score:1) by FishandChips (695645) on Saturday October 15, @08:59PM (#13799980) This is all a little hypocritical. People may say they want to know what's in their food, but very often they don't. If they did, chances are they'd never eat fast food or a ready-meal again. What they want is the convenience of mass-produced food while also feeling that it's good for you. Unfortunately the two are often contradictory. So we enter a little game in which supermarkets are told to reduce the salt and/or sugar and fat in their products, for example, but on the whole fail to do so because if they did the stuff would be shown up for the denatured sludge that it is and their customers would start complaining.If you want good food, don't use supermarkets. Buy from local stores, which the supermarkets will put out of business if no one uses them, and prepare it all yourself. Four slices of brown bread from one of the supermarkets where I live contain more fat than a Mars Bar. Tagging the product chain makes no difference at all. On the whole the food industry is quite likely to give you cancer or heart disease after 10-20 years of chomping through microwave dinners, sugar-soaked cookies et al and quite unlikely to bring you to a sudden end with poisoned baked beans or stewed steak that turns out to have been sourced from a garbage dump in in Azerbajan. [ Reply to ThisRe:Holy Cow by Sometimes_Rational (Score:1) Saturday October 15, @11:48PM Tracking completed (Score:1) by Soloact (805735) on Saturday October 15, @09:23PM (#13800108) (http://www.soloact.com/)