The Spychips RFID blog came out with some more Big Brother half-truths in a recent post regarding the USDA's National Animal Information System (NAIS) resolution in Texas.
Katherine Albrecht writes:
The plan involves identifying all premises with livestock and registering them in a federal database…if you own a food animal or a horse you will also be required to number it with an RFID tag or other numbering system and register it with the federal government.
She refers to the resolution as yet another “scheme” being put forth by Big Brother.
Sure thing Katherine – what a scheme!!! Never mind the fact that the technology can prevent and minimize the spread of diseases by providing an easy and steadfast tracking of livestock throughout the live animal supply chain.
I’ll take my salmonella burger still moo-ing, please.
The tags would collect health data, especially temperature data, which is particularly important when it comes to watching over the health of the herd. I don’t know about you, but I’m certainly in favor of anything that can help identify, treat and isolate sick animals before the rest of the herd – and my dinner - is adversely affected.
1 Comments:
Hi, Sterling:
Katherine Albrecht here. While it is possible to use temperature-sensing RFID tags in animals, the USDA's NAIS plan does not call for this, nor does it, to the best of my knowledge, even mention it. The goal is not to use RFID to monitor the health of animals on an ongoing basis, but to register the animals' origin so in the case of a disease outbreak the source of the contamination can be identified and other herd members quarantined.
One could argue either side of this issue, depending on whether you more greatly value limited government surveillance and control over individuals' lives or increased security and protection by the government. That particular debate has been going on for a long time, and we will probably not resolve it here. ;)
For the record, the primary place where temperature-sensing RFID has been proposed in the animal food supply chain is on packages of meat bound for stores and warehouses. Their purpose is to ensure that the meat has been kept at a uniformly cold temperature. In other words, if a truck full of meat breaks down by the side of the highway and reaches 90 degrees, the temp.-sensing RFID tags would report that. This is where you might see something like salmonella or other food poisoning.
CASPIAN does not oppose the use of RFID in the supply chain (See our position statement at:http://www.spychips.com/jointrfid_position_paper.html), but we believe it is a bad idea to use RFID on individual consumer items. RFID tags on cases and crates of meat do not pose consumer privacy problems, and may even be a good idea for solving this particular problem.
On a final note, you refer to my post as containing "half-truths." The truth is that the USDA has developed a plan to number and track all food animals in the U.S. We may disagree on whether or not that is a good idea, but the factual truth is pretty undisputable. If there are any factual errors in my post, I would appreciate your pointing them out to me, as I do not want to post inaccurate information.
With best wishes for continued freedom,
Katherine Albrecht, Ed.D.
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Dr. Katherine Albrecht
Co-author of "SPYCHIPS: How Major Corporations and Government
Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID"
Founder and Director, CASPIAN Consumer Privacy
kma(at)spychips.com
http://www.spychips.com // http://www.nocards.org
Bio online at: http://www.spychips.com/media/katherine-albrecht.html
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