Industry Must Promote RFID's Role in Food Safety

Moreover, GS1 and EPCglobal have been supporting a great deal of research into standards for creating secure pedigree documents for drugs that can apply to food. The organizations have also been considering the technology, data and messaging standards needed to track back where tags have been read and share this data quickly via the Internet. I'm sure someone in the U.S. government is aware of all of this, but I don't know if anyone on the President's Food Safety Working Group is up to speed.

If you feel, as I do, that RFID can help protect the public and ensure food safety, then submit your comments to the working group online, or write letters to the group's co-chairs:

Kathleen Sebelius
Secretary of Health and Human Services
The U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services
200 Independence Ave. S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20201

and

Tom Vilsack
Secretary of Agriculture
U.S. Department of Agriculture
1400 Independence Ave. S.W.
Washington, DC 20250

In your letters, stress these points. RFID technology has matured to the point where it can be used to collect the serialized data required to track individual lots or batches of food. It does not require human intervention, and thus will not drive up labor costs. The technology has been proven at the state level (see Hawaii Plans Trace-Back Program for Fresh Food) and in the use of tracking livestock; in fact, several governments, including Canada, Australia and New Zealand, have mandated the use of RFID to track cattle. And the Auto ID Labs have been developing "discovery services" that would enable companies to trace where and when a product's RFID tag was read in the supply chain (see Designing Discovery Services).

The FDA could do a world of good by launching a national RFID pilot in conjunction with industry to examine how a national or even global system might be managed, and how companies might benefit from utilizing the data captured for track and trace to improve the way they do business. How about using some of the stimulus money to stimulate an international movement to improve food-chain safety and traceability? There's an opportunity here for government and industry to use RFID to do something good for consumers, as well as for business. Reducing waste and improving food-chain efficiencies is also good for the environment, and could help fight hunger (see Mending Broken Links). But nothing is going to happen unless we light a fire under the folks in Washington.

Mark Roberti is the founder and editor of RFID Journal. If you would like to comment on this article, click on the link below. To read more of Mark's opinions, visit the RFID Journal Blog or click here.