Federal plan aims to track all livestock by 2009

New system intends to stop disease

By Kristin Collins The (Raleigh) News & Observer

Once in a while, Leslie Averill grabs a goat from the back yard and puts it in her Chevy Silverado for a spin. They visit her chiropractor’s office, maybe stop by the outlets – just to socialize a little and see the looks on people’s faces. Pretty soon, Averill might have to report every goat jaunt to the federal government.

A new national system, designed to prevent the spread of diseases such as avian flu and mad cow disease, aims to track every livestock animal in the nation – be it a cow on a feed lot, a farm-raised trout or a baby goat in Averill’s back yard.

Farms will be registered, animals will be tagged with numbers, and their movements will be reported to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The information will be stored in a national database.

It will affect an estimated 50,000 animal owners in North Carolina. Even children who raise animals for 4-H programs might have to comply.

"Even if it’s Aunt Bessie’s pet cow, that cow is susceptible to foot and mouth disease," said Mary Ann McBride, a state Department of Agriculture veterinarian implementing the system in North Carolina.

The program is voluntary for now. Agriculture officials are asking animal owners only to register their property. But the government plans to make the full program mandatory by early 2009.

The idea has many animal owners feeling besieged.

Internet chat groups for animal owners are ablaze. Grass-roots opposition groups are forming, and rumors are flying.

Horse enthusiasts worry that they will have to put ear tags on show horses, or tell the government each time they take a trail ride. One Person County farmer said a neighbor feared that he would have to tag the worms he uses for composting.

Much of the fear arises from uncertainty. Federal agriculture officials are still working out details of the program: how the animals will be tagged, what it will cost, how animal movements will be reported. They are throwing around all sorts of high-tech tracking ideas: ear tags that emit radio frequencies, microchips – even retinal scanning.

"People have jumped on the national security bandwagon without really thinking it through," said Averill, who breeds and sells goats on her 36-acre farm in Johnston County. "The small breeder is going to be forced into something that’s so cost-prohibitive that they won’t be able to own their animals anymore."

Federal agriculture officials created the National Animal Identification System in 2004, after the United States confirmed its first case of mad cow disease in a Holstein in Washington state. Mad cow, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is a brain-wasting disease whose human-variant is fatal and has forced the slaughter of millions of cows in Britain.

Officials couldn’t track all the places where the Washington cow had lived, or all the other cows that came in contact with it.

The new system would let the government trace an animal’s history within 48 hours. If it works, agriculture officials will be able to look up an animal’s ID number and know every place it has ever lived.

Some in the meat industry say there are plenty of reasons to track animals more closely.

Bundy Plyler, director of the N.C. Cattlemen’s Association, said many countries that buy U.S. beef want more detailed information about it. Being able to lay out the life history of a steak could be a major selling point. "There are consumers that say they want to know more about where their food comes from," Plyler said.

The logistics of tagging and documenting animal movements are one thing for large farms with bookkeepers and accountants. They’re another for small farmers trying to make a living selling eggs or goat’s milk soap.

Steve Moize keeps about 3,000 chickens and turkeys on his Person County farm. It’s a tiny operation compared with most chicken farms in the state, where farmers raise hundreds of thousands of birds in long metal houses.

The standards for tagging chickens and turkeys aren’t set, but under current proposals, Moize would have to tag more chickens than larger farms. The USDA has said it probably will let large flocks be tagged with one number because the birds stay together and never go outside.

Moize’s free-range birds are raised outside, so he probably will have to identify each one.

Moize said spending a few dollars to tag each bird could put his operation in the red. "And if I had to track every animal movement every time I sold one chicken or a predator killed a chicken, that would be a lot of paperwork I don’t have time to do," he said.

McBride, the state agriculture official, said it’s too soon to panic.

The standards for tagging most animals have yet to be set. The federal government is studying each species independently, so animal owners won’t end up with unworkable rules – such as ear tags for show horses.

For now, McBride said, she is just asking animal owners to fill out a short registration form. Nearly 2,700 animal owners have signed up. She said the state won’t do anything more until the federal government insists.

"I think people are just looking for another indication that the government, that Big Brother is trying to take over," McBride said. "This is a consumer confidence issue. Right now, who knows where that hamburger at McDonald’s comes from?" - wilmingtonstar.com

Injectable chip opens door to 'human bar code'

Charles J. Murray PlanetAnalog (01/04/2002)

Radio-frequency identification chips, which have found a home in applications ranging from toll road passes to smart retail shelves, may be close to taking up residence in the human body.

A Florida-based company has introduced a passive RFID chip that is compatible with human tissue, and the developer is proposing the chip for use on implantable pacemakers, defibrillators and artificial joints. The company, Applied Digital Solutions (Palm Beach, Fla.), also said that the chip could be injected through a syringe and used as a sort of "human bar code" in security applications.

Called the VeriChip, the device could open up a broad new segment for the $900 million-a-year RFID business, especially if society embraces the idea of using microchips for human identification. Applied Digital executives ultimately believe that the worldwide market for such implantable chips could reach $70 billion per year.

"The human market for this technology could be huge," said Keith Bolton, senior vice president of technology development at the company.

Futurists agree that the idea of using microchips inside the body could ultimately represent a large market opportunity, but they doubt whether this initial effort will have a significant effect on the RFID market.

"Are we going to see chips embedded in the human body? You bet we are," said Paul Saffo, a director of The Institute for the Future (Menlo Park, Calif.). "But it isn't going to happen overnight."

Pacemaker helper

Still, Applied Digital Solutions' executives are preparing to sell between $2.5 million and $5 million worth of VeriChips in 2002. The company initially plans to sell the chips in South America and Europe for use with pacemakers and defibrillators. In that application, it could be attached to the outside of the heart device or implanted nearby in the body. Doing so would enable medical personnel to identify and monitor a patient's implanted devices merely by running a handheld scanner over the patient's chest.

"If you're a pacemaker user and you're in an accident and in shock, an ambulance attendant could scan the body and retrieve information about the device," Bolton said. "The chip could provide information about the pacemaker's settings, who its manufacturer is and whether you have any medical allergies."

The company said it is working with makers of implantable pacemakers and defibrillators to incorporate the chip during the equipment-manufacturing process.

Applied Digital Solutions is awaiting approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and does not expect to sell the chips in the United States until that approval is granted. The company's engineers said they expect approval later this year.

The announcement of the chip's availability created a media stir, however - not because of its potential use with pacemakers but because of its science-fiction-like potential application in human identification systems. Because the microchip and its antenna measure just 11.1 x 2.1 mm, Applied Digital Solutions said the assembly can be injected through a syringe and implanted in various locations within the body.

The tube-shaped VeriChip includes a memory that holds 128 characters of information, an electromagnetic coil for transmitting data and a tuning capacitor, all encapsulated within a silicone-and-glass enclosure. The passive RF unit, which operates at 125 kHz, is activated by moving a company-designed scanner within about a foot of the chip. Doing so excites the coil and "wakes up" the chip, enabling it to transmit data.

The chips are said to be similar to those that are already implanted in about a million dogs and cats nationwide to enable pet owners to identify and reclaim animals that have been temporarily lost. Applied Digital Solutions, which has made the pet-tracking chips for several years, says that the human chips differ mainly in the biocompatible coating that's used to keep the body from rejecting the implanted chip. The VeriChip is believed to be the first such chip designed for human identification.

Inspired by Sept. 11

In September, Applied Digital Solutions implanted its first human chip when a New Jersey surgeon, Richard Seelig, injected two of the chips into himself. He placed one chip in his left forearm and the other near the artificial hip in his right leg.

"He was motivated after he saw firefighters at the World Trade Center in September writing their Social Security numbers on their forearms with Magic Markers," Bolton said. "He thought that there had to be a more sophisticated way of doing an identification."

Applied Digital said Seelig, who serves as a medical consultant to the company, has now had the chips implanted in him for three months with no signs of rejection or infection. Ordinarily, the company said, the chips would be implanted in a doctor's office under local anesthesia.

Applied Digital's executives said the ability to inject the chips opens up a variety of RFID applications in high-security situations, as well other types of human identification systems. The chips, they said, could be implanted in young children or in adults with Alzheimer's disease, to help officials identify people who can't identify themselves. But the company is backing away from involuntary identification applications, such the tracking of prisoners or parolees. "We are advocating that this technology be totally voluntary," Bolton said.

Whether the technology will boost the market for RFID chips remains uncertain. Industry analysts had assumed that by now RFID would constitute a far larger market than its current, $900 million annual tally. A consortium of major manufacturers has sought to push the technology as a replacement for bar codes in everyday products ranging from cereal boxes to shaving cream cans, but the cost hasn't dropped low enough to make that feasible. More recently, a group led by the European Central Bank began work on embedding RFID chips in the euro bank note, but the chip category has yet to find its killer app.

Applied Digital nonetheless has high hopes for its RFID technology. The publicly held company's stock did not fare well last year, plummeting from a high of $3 a share on Feb. 7 to 11 cents per share on Sept. 17. But its per-share stock price jumped to 50 cents from 38 cents after the company announced the VeriChip.

Eventual adoption

Analysts expressed confidence that the concept would eventually be adopted but were skeptical about its immediate future. "For this to work, you are going to need a standard that everyone agrees to," said Saffo of The Institute for the Future. "Then you have to convince people to buy reading devices that may be fairly costly."

Applied Digital's engineers would not say how much the chips or handheld readers might cost. The company's reader is a proprietary unit that is required for use with the VeriChip. Some further suggested that the chip might be too large for easy adoption.

Veterinarians who have implanted the chips in dogs and cats say that the techniques used in animals are unlikely to be embraced by humans. "The needle is huge," said Dean Christopoulos, a veterinarian in Des Plaines, Ill. "It's almost as thick as your pinky."

Some engineers suggested the technology might ultimately be scaled down, making the chip's acceptance more likely. At Alien Technology Corp. (Morgan Hill, Calif.), engineers have already discussed using that company's ultrasmall RFID chips in human applications. Alien, which uses a process known as fluidic self-assembly to create chips measuring 350 x 350 microns, has demonstrated its 900-MHz technology on everyday products such as soap and shampoo bottles. The coded information can be detected and read across distances measuring almost 3 feet.

"There are companies making RFID tags that are much smaller than a couple of millimeters," said Andy Holman, director of business development for Alien Technology.

Analysts also suggested that human identification technology would be more likely to be popularized when engineers are able to integrate more memory and other features, such as global-positioning satellite units and induction-based power-recharging techniques. GPS might help find lost children and adults, they said, while larger memories would enable doctors to store vital patient information.

The concept "goes all the way back to the 1960s," said Jerry Krasner, vice president of market intelligence for American Technology International Inc.'s Embedded Forecasters Group. "What's new is the ability to store a lot of data.

"As soon as you can do that, you'll see more applications for this type of technology," he said. - eetimes.com

Global Economic warfare:
Dioxin crisis widens in Belgium, Netherlands, Germany

02/02/2006- Europe's dioxin crisis has widened, with food regulators in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany placing quarantines on hundreds more pig and poultry producers that received contaminated feed. The dioxin contamination, not only means a sourcing problem for processors, but also marks another European food scare that might put people off their meat. The threat of avian influenza has already hit poultry consumption is some countries, while the beef industry is starting to recover from fears over BSE and food-and-mouth disease.

So far only South Korea has banned the import of pork from Belgium and the Netherlands as a result of the discovery. The country is the most important non-EU destination for pork produced in the two countries. They exported a total of 25,000 tonnes of pork worth about €62 million to South Korea in 2005. A total of about 650 pig and poultry farms are now under quarantine in the three countries.

Food safety regulators in the Netherlands and Belgium also announced that some of the meat from contaminated farms was sold in shops over the last two months. Both regulators said the level of contamination did not pose any serious risk to public health. Yesterday Belgium extended a quarantine to a total of 386 pig and poultry producers suspected of receiving feed contaminated with the carcinogen, doubling the number the country's food safety agency (FAVV) had originally banned from the market. Of these 361 were pig farms, 24 were poultry farms, and one rabbit producer.

FAVV said test results from the suspect farms will be available Saturday.

The Netherlands food regulator (VWA) said on 31 January that 250 producers remain under quarantine and that tests are currently underway. The regulator also released a report from the Dutch Office for Risk Assessment. "Consumption of pork meat and meat products could lead to a slight increase of the dioxin intake of consumers," the report stated. "In the most extreme intake scenario the tolerable weekly intake of dioxins might be slightly exceeded. However, the calculated incidentally increased intake does not pose a health risk for the consumer."

Meanwhile Germany's regulator has quarantined five pig farms and is currently testing for the carcinogen.

Tessenderlo, a feed ingredients company fingered as the source of the contamination, today said that an inadequate test had resulted in the error. "For Tessenderlo Group, discussions about compensation and amicable settlements are premature as long as the various investigations are under way," the Belgium-based company stated. "The problem shows that the PCB test was inadequate for testing dioxins and that we were wrong, as were most specialists, to rely on it."

The discovery of the dioxin contamination was first reported by the Netherlands, which on 25 January sent out an EU-wide alert on pig fat originating from Belgium. The Netherlands said its tests indicated dioxin levels 25 time the maximum permitted concentrations in pork fat. The dioxin was discovered in pork fat produced by Profat. FAVV said that between 6 and 28 October, two filters at Tessenderlo Chemicals were defective, resulting in untreated hydrochloric acid being delivered to its subsidiary, PB Gelatins. PB Gelatins in turn, supplied animal feed producers with dioxin contaminated ingredients.

FAVV found that that a normal consumption of such the gelatine produced by PB Gelatins is less than 25 per cent of the amount of acceptable dioxin consumption. " That thus means that there is currently no immediate danger to the public health," the agency stated.

The Belgian food agency has also put under monitoring the stockbreeding customers of Leroy and Algoet, two other feed producers. The Tessenderlo Group has admitted that a hydrochloric acid filtration problem at their plant is the likely source of the dioxin contamination. In a press release the company said the contaminated feed poses no threat to public health.

Belgium and the Netherlands, along with France and Germany, are among the top pig meat producers in the EU. The Netherlands accounted for about eight per cent of the EU's production in 2000, according to the bloc's figures. Dioxin has been the cause of numerous food scares. It was found in Dutch potato animal feed in 2004. Pig farmers in the Netherlands were found to be using it as an illegal hormone for pigs in 2002. Belgium's meat industry suffered a similar blow in 1999, when dioxin was discovered in pigs and chickens. Then, the industry lost millions of euros either through a quarantine of some 200 Belgian farms, or through the loss of their export markets after some countries imposed bans. The country ended up slaughtering seven million chickens and 60,000 pigs. The scare, which occurred just before the 1999 general election, played a key part in the landslide defeat of the former government of Jean-Luc Dehaene. - food production daily

16,000 Species Said to Face Extinction

By SAM CAGE, Associated Press Writer Mon May 1, GENEVA -

Polar bears and hippos are among more than 16,000 species of animals and plants threatened with global extinction, the World Conservation Union said Tuesday.

According to the Swiss-based conservation group, known by its acronym IUCN, the number of species classified as being in serious danger of extinction rose from about 15,500 in its previous "Red List" report, published in 2004.

The list includes one in three amphibians, a quarter of the world's mammals and coniferous trees, and one in eight birds, according to a preview of the 2006 Red List. The full report is published later this week.

"Biodiversity loss is increasing, not slowing down," said Achim Steiner, the conservation group's director general. "The implications of this trend for the productivity and resilience of ecosystems and the lives and livelihoods of billions of people who depend on them are far-reaching."

The Red List classifies about 40,000 species according to their risk of extinction and provides a searchable online database of the results. The total number of species on the planet is unknown, with 15 million being the most widely accepted estimate. Up to 1.8 million are known today. People are the main reason for most species' decline, mainly through habitat destruction, according to IUCN.

Polar bears are threatened by global warming and melting ice caps, because they are conditioned for the icy environment and depend on Arctic ice floes for hunting seas. They are predicted to suffer a 30 percent population decline in the next 45 years.

The hippopotamus population in war-ravaged Congo, meanwhile, has plummeted by 95 percent, mainly because of unregulated hunting for meat and ivory in their teeth.

"Regional conflicts and political instability in some African countries have created hardship for many of the region's inhabitants, and the impact on wildlife has been equally devastating," said Jeffrey McNeely, chief scientist at IUCN.

Freshwater fish have suffered some of the most dramatic population declines because of human activities that damage their habitat, like forest clearance, pollution and water extraction. In the Mediterranean, more than half of the 252 endemic species are threatened with extinction. Seven species, including two relatives of carp, are already extinct, IUCN said.

The conservation union warned that the decline in wetlands and freshwater ecosystems will also damage supplies for humans of food, clean drinking water and sanitation.

Other species threatened with extinction include desert gazelles, ocean sharks and Mediterranean flowers, IUCN said.

Some 784 are listed as extinct - only a small increase from 2004 - while 65 are found only in captivity. But the situation looks a little brighter for some others, such as the white-tailed eagle and Indian vultures.

"Reversing this trend is possible, as numerous conservation success stories have proven," Steiner said. "Biodiversity cannot be saved by environmentalists alone - it must become the responsibility of everyone with the power and resources to act."

Geomagnetic flip may not be random after all

21 March 2006

One of the most fascinating natural phenomena on Earth is the flipping of its magnetic field, which has occurred hundreds of times in the last 160 million years. When the magnetic field flips, the North Pole becomes the South Pole and vice versa. The last time this happened was some 780,000 years ago, so we could be heading for another reversal soon. Now, physicists in Italy have found that the frequency of these polarity reversals is not random as previously thought but occurs in clusters, revealing some kind of "memory" of previous events (physics/0603086).

Although a full geomagnetic polarity reversal can take thousands of years to complete, the implications could be enormous. As well as affecting the migration trajectories of birds and other animals, the disruption to the Earth's magnetic field could expose the Earth to hazardous cosmic rays -- a scenario that some researchers have linked to mass extinction events like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs around 65 million years ago. Geoscientists believe that our planet's internal magnetic dynamo is responsible for pole reversals, but the actual mechanism is not well understood.

Previous analyses assumed that the number of times the poles have reversed over last 160 million years follows a Poisson distribution, implying that the events are random. The Poisson distribution tells you the probability of a number of events occurring in a fixed time if the events are independent and the average rate is known. A good example of the Poisson distribution in physics is the likelihood of unstable radioactive nuclei decaying in a certain period.

Now, a team of physicists led by Vincenzo Carbone of the University of Calabria have discovered that the sequence of polarity reversals can be well described by a Lévy distribution instead. In contrast to Poisson statistics, the Lévy distribution describes stochastic processes that are characterised by the presence of "memory" effects -- or long-range correlations between the events in time. Lévy distributions are widely used to study many critical phenomena, such as earthquakes, and also when analysing financial data. The researchers obtained their results by careful statistical analysis of different sets of paleomagnetic data containing estimates of when the Earth's poles reversed.

"The result means that polarity reversals are not random events that are independent of each other," explains team member Fabio Lepreti. "Instead, there is some degree of memory in the magnetic dynamo processes giving rise to the reversals," he says. "We hope that our work will serve as a useful reference point for models that aim to describe the phenomenon of pole reversal." The Italy team now plans to build new dynamic models to describe the field reversal sequences in a simple way, so that the physical mechanisms that trigger pole reversals can be more easily explained. - physicsweb.org