Special report on Food & Animal

One needs only to drive down the more than 250 miles of Interstate 5 bisecting California’s San Joaquin Valley to understand the magnitude of produce-growing operations – orchards, citrus groves, and produce fields stretch as far as the eye can see. Many people call this vast agricultural region the “food basket of the world.” Yet this area represents just one state’s contribution to the global food source network. Add in the worldwide collection of farmers and that network expands exponentially. Subsequently, when outbreaks of food borne illnesses occur, such as the E. coli tainted spinach in 2006, and the recent Salmonella-tainted tomatoes, the difficulty in tracing spoiled produce back to its source becomes highly complicated. To combat this problem, growers are increasingly turning to radio frequency identification (RFID) to trace produce in minutes rather than days (and often weeks) from the store shelf, back to the distributor, and down to a patch of soil on the farm. This technology provides ROI in the form of significantly diminished food safety issues, more efficient workforce operations, fewer supply chain bottlenecks, and consistently fresh produce.