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"When
you look at food security, you find that we have a pretty complex
food system without a lot of protection," says Geoffrey Dahl, an
Extension specialist and associate professor of dairy science in the
Department of Animal Sciences. "We have not only the potential for
terrorist acts affecting food safety but situations that could
inflict severe damage to the whole economy as well."
Dahl is
part of a cross-campus project, the Food Security Initiative that is
funded by the Chancellor of the Urbana-Champaign campus and Deere &
Co. It is focused on creating, maintaining and tracing product
identity through the food chain system. Researchers are aiming for
technologies that will allow the meat produced from one cow or the
soybeans from a farmer's field to be traced all the way to the
grocer's shelves.
The
Initiative involves the Colleges of Agricultural, Consumer and
Environmental Sciences; Veterinary Medicine; Engineering; Liberal
Arts and Sciences; Business and Commerce, and the National Center
for Supercomputing Applications.
"We're
looking at the whole food supply chain," he explains, "searching for
ways to enhance value and track individual units. This also includes
new identification technology."
Dahl's
particular piece of this research pie is a small, implanted device
for livestock that is about the size of a single grain of sand or
salt. It has no power source of its own but draws power from the
radio waves that poll it for data. About 25,000 of the devices
suspended in a small bottle of water are barely visible.
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"They
are too small to be taken out and switched to another animal," he
says. "The electronics involved are such that we may be able to do
all sorts of things with the device, such as monitoring the animal's
temperature or control hormone release."
One part
of the Food Security Initiative involves finding ways that the
identity preservation techniques can also be used to enhance value.
"Most of
our agricultural production in this country is based on a commodity
system but we are moving toward a trait-based system," he says.
Traits
could be something like GMO-free soybeans or organically-produced
beef and identification technology would make it possible to
guarantee those traits for end-users.
"On the
livestock side, we have another motivation as well," Dahl says. "We
have laws requiring country-of-origin labeling on food products. But
if we can't preserve identification how can we conform to the law?
These laws would certainly be easier to implement if we could
certify identity."
That
ability might also encourage some producers to enter niche markets
for their livestock.
"Identity preservation will become more important in the future and
should help us better protect our food supply. At the same time, it
also protects the greater economy. For instance, if we had a
terrorist act that introduced foot-and-mouth disease into the U.S.
livestock population, it would not only be devastating to producers
but to the larger economy as well," Dahl says.
"If we
do have a disease outbreak somewhere, we can use identity
preservation to go back through the system and figure out where the
problem came from."
[University of Illinois news release]
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