Your Disgusted Laugh for the Day

[MBombardier]

http://www.naturalnews.com/032600_RFID_food.html

What are they thinking? Actually, it's pretty clear they are not thinking, or have forgotten how to think, or some combination thereof.

[tex]

The only thing that surprises me about it is that someone in this country didn't propose it first. Invasion of privacy has gotten to epidemic proportions in today's world. What worries me, is that just as happened with GMO foods, we, the pigeons, (oops - I mean consumers ), of this world, probably won't be able to stop it, because the governments of the world are strongly in favor of this type of tracking program, (and, in fact, they're rabidly in favor of virtually any tracking program that sounds as though it might provide additional information on the habits of anyone and everyone).

I'll give you an example of why I believe we won't be able to stop it:

Right this moment, researchers at the Office of the Texas State Chemist, which is a branch of The Texas Department of Agriculture, which is affiliated with USDA, of course, is working on the development of a program whereby electronically-trackable "taggants" will be added to grain as it is being harvested. IOW, their sales pitch for doing this is that it will allow the government to instantly track the source of any food, no matter where the ingredients were originally produced. If someone buys a loaf of bread, for example, and claims that it made them sick, a sample will provide the information needed to instantly trace that wheat to the exact field, (or fields, if it is blended), where it was originally grown.

That all sounds like a good thing, on the surface, but when you think about it, all of this will be automated, with no way to opt out, and the mechanism that does the tagging will be built into the combines, (the machines used to harvest grain), with no way to turn it off. Therefore, every bit of grain that we eat, in the future, will contain those taggants. I don't know about you, but that makes me plenty nervous. What are the long-term implications of eating all that stuff? Worrying about cellphone radiation is a minor problem compared with this, because we can turn off a cell phone, or use it without holding it up against our head all day. We wouldn't be able to do anything about those electronic tags in our food - we would just be forced to eat them - if we eat those food items, and I'm sure that eventually, every possible type of food will probably be tagged in some way.

I can visualize where this is going. As government health care becomes a reality all over the world, do we really believe that the government is going to continue to allow us to eat what we want in the future? Most people currently ignore the food pyramid, and I'm pretty sure that they will ignore the food "plate" after it takes over as the official guideline for eating in this country. As a result, obesity and disease cost billions, and the government is surely going to try to put an end to that waste, at some point in the future.

How will they do that? By then, some of those chips will not only have the capability of detecting certain health markers in our body, but they will be programmed to act on the information. IOW, if some bureaucrat has decided that someone who is 10 pounds overweight should be limited to X number of calories per day, then once that quota is reached, the chips will trigger D or nausea, or whatever is deemed appropriate, by altering signals to either our enteric nervous system, or our central nervous system, or both. Or maybe it will transmit a message directly to our doctor's computer, advising her or him of what we have done. Make no mistake about it - Big Brother will be watching - everything we do, and everything that we ingest.

Alternatively, it might be programmed to trigger a reaction if a certain type of food is detected in someone who has been deemed to be "off-limits" for that particular food. The possibilities are endless. Remember, we are long past Nineteen Eighty-Four, and I have never doubted the message in that novel.

As preposterous as this sounds, I have no doubt that this is coming, in one form or another. The concept could be used for good, healthy purposes, but if the governments and/or industry are in charge of the project, there is no way that it will end up in favor of the pigeons, (oops - I mean consumers).

Thanks for posting that - I hadn't seen it yet.

Tex

[patc73]

This is definitely much scarier than "1984". People like us have enough food problems as it is!

[sarkin]

Yikes, Marliss.

And Tex - Ai ai ai!!!!

Oh, wait, and also - "I didn't know that!"

There - I've fit all my classic responses into a single post.

This makes me truly sad I can eat eggs and therefore there's no point to getting those chickens. I grow and eat some food, but on my dwillionth of an acre here, it's a tiny contribution to the caloric needs. (My serviceberries are ripening... here's hoping I can eat them.)

What would be *awesome* (had a vocabulary boost from a young helper on a job today) - truly awesome - would be if someone could get a Matrix-like movie about this coming technology made into a blockbuster right away, so people would be suitably outraged. (There's a lot of outrage being wasted in unproductive directions these days... let's harness some of that!)

Love,
S

[Gloria]

What a scary proposition. I had no idea that they were testing something like this. Like Sara, I can only grow so much on my property. Quinoa isn't one of the items and neither are turkey, lamb and pork.

Thank you Tex, for your perspective and knowledge.

Gloria

[MBombardier]

I see a return to the small family farm, and sickle and scythe. Who needs a health club when there's farm work to do? Right now, there are bartering, flea markets, garage sales, even craigslist as legitimate means of transferring goods without government interference, but if the government gets too obnoxious, I can see even groceries being sold on the black market. If the government seeks to shut down legitimate outlets (like recently saying that garage sales have to comply with consumer product safety regs in reference to baby equipment and toys ) I am confident that as time goes by, we independent Americans will do whatever it takes to keep the government out of our business.

That being said, it is sobering that officials of the sovereign state of Texas would be doing that stuff.

[starfire]

but if the government gets too obnoxious,

It's quite obnoxious to me already.

Love, Shirley

[tex]

That being said, it is sobering that officials of the sovereign state of Texas would be doing that stuff.

If this is going on in Texas, imagine what's going on in California.

Actually, I'm just going by what shows up in the monthly newsletter from the State Chemist's Office, that's mailed to licensed feed manufacturers. There's no telling what else they're doing, that we don't know about. By the time news about a project appears in that newsletter, it's usually virtually a done deal, and they're simply ironing out the final details of how they plan to administer the program. This is being done on the hope that it will provide them with a better way to monitor micotoxins in feed, (primarily aflatoxin, fumonisin, and zearalenone, but there are many others that they would like to monitor, if they had the means). I'm guessing that it will take a few years for them to work out all the details for implementation of the program, but I'm convinced that it's inevitable, eventually.

Most state agriculture departments try to "keep up with the Jones", so typically, any time that one state is working on a project, all other states that produce, or deal with that commodity, virtually always monitor the progress of ongoing research in other states, and they either adopt a program approved in another state, or they pursue their own program, to accomplish the same goal by a method more suitable to their situation. And, of course, it's all subject to USDA policy. At any rate, we can be sure that if/when they decide to initiate the program, it will rapidly spread to all other states in the Union. I'm guessing that USDA directed them to develop this program, but that's just a wild guess, because I haven't seen any information on who actually started the ball rolling.

The Texas State Chemist's Office is closely affiliated with Texas A & M University, (they're even located in the same city). TAM is the source of most of their employees, and most of their research, so they tend to pursue academic solutions, (in contrast to the real world solutions that private businesses usually develop). That's one of the reasons why, even though I have been involved in farming and agribusiness all my life, I'm not a huge fan of TAM, (because many of the projects and techniques dreamed up in ivory towers don't always work out so well in the real world - it usually takes the expertise of private sector knowledge earned by experience, to make most new concepts work well on a practical basis). That said, a lot of good ideas come out of TAM, (but a lot of bad ideas originate there, also). Of course, being a graduate of UT, (TAM's arch rival), might have something to do with my biased attitude. One thing is certain - they are well aware of the proposal in GB that you posted about, and I'm pretty sure that their long-term plans will point in that direction.

In the meantime, I'm not going to worry about it. We'll see what happens when they officially announce it - hopefully years from now.

Tex

[ant]

This thread reminds me of a film that haunts me: Gattaca.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca

Best, ant

[Zizzle]

This thread reminds me of a film that haunts me: Gattaca.

Gattaca haunts me too. I think of it when I hear of TV screens being installed in supermarkets isles.