900 billion food items may be RFID-tagged by 2015

Peanut butter. Milk. Baby food. Spinach. These are just some of the higher profile recalls we've seen in the past year. In the U. S. alone, 300 million pounds of meat and poultry products were recalled between 1994 and 2007. And consumers increasingly demand to know more about the food they buy. . . when there are 76 million cases of food-borne illness every year in the U.S.

But how do you provide end to end visibility across a supply chain that can span thousands of miles and cross international borders, and must protect something as perishable as meat and poultry?

. . . One industry analyst expects that, by 2015, 900 billion food items worldwide could be RFID tagged.

Obviously all the encouragement we have given IBM is working, since their television and print advertising for their "Smarter Planet" campaign has hit full stride. (Quoted throughout in italics.)

What excites me about this campaign is how matter-of-factly IBM discusses that RFID and its sister technologies will, essentially, save the planet.

For all practical purposes, this campaign is the first time the public will be consistently hearing about RFID without you-know-who's name attached to it.

In one fine spot for "Smarter Planet" on network TV there is a rapid-fire photo montage of smart technology icons. As it flashes by in a blink, if you watch carefully you will spot the RFID inlay. If the images went any quicker, some RFID conspiracy nut would complain it was intended to plant subliminal suggestions to the viewers.

The advertisement I draw to your attention here is from this past Monday's Washington Post back cover ad. Some of my digitally oriented readers may think that is quaint; but it is big time, Buckaroo. Last time they ran here in the D.C. paper we checked and the same ad ran in the New York and LA Times' and Chicago Trib. Perhaps elsewhere.

In this particular ad, "A smarter planet needs smarter food," incredible numbers are put to paper. They ask, "How do you reduce waste and loss - which today stand at 50% between field and fork - in a world where 820 million people are undernourished?"

We have written here on RFID Street how 15% of all perishables shipped worldwide are thrown away. It is not just the "meat chain." After calculating the costs of growing, shipping, refrigerating, storing and disposing of this waste the research showed not only are the cost savings of reducing millions of tons of waste obvious, the environmental saving from unspent energy and the reduced carbon footprint were equally huge.

As Oliver Hedgepeth reported here, when fresh jalapenos or tomatoes leave their warehouses in Texas or Mexico, and start their journey by refrigerated tractor trailer, there are many opportunities along the boiling hot and humid 2,000 to 6,000 miles of highway to add heat-born problems to raw, frozen, and cooked food.

Boxes of frozen, cold or cool goods and fresh produce often are placed on the hot, concrete loading dock, or a runway, waiting for transport to arrive; or they can sit in the back of the 53-foot trailer as waves of hot air pour through the open trailer door.

For smarter food, a system IBM developed for Matiq, a subsidiary of Norway's largest food supplier . . . will enable the packaging of products with RFID tags to help keep them in optimal condition. At the production factory, sensors will be encoded with data and included with each piece of meat. As the meat is cut, the system will provide information to the sensors including the farm of origin and the animal's age and health records. RFID readers will then capture the information as the sensors pass through the different stages of the process from production to distribution to delivery. . .

Matiq's smart food system can help suppliers and grocers reduce costs and improve safety. Even more importantly, it can increase consumers' confidence in the quality of the food they purchase by providing detailed information on where any given animal has lived and what it has eaten.

Sounds good to me. And if they keep promoting smart planet technology, then we will reciprocate with more of this free publicity, clearly what they are angling for. . .