My article, “Animal Tags for People?” has been generating some cyber blips—it is the most emailed article on the entire BusinessWeek.com site, and the second most read article (just behind “Six Supercharged” stocks).
Not surprisingly, most of those commenting are thumbs-down on the idea. It’s also generating a fair number of comments on the FreeRepublic site, a politically-oriented site, and there the commentary is similarly negative. Some of the comments are quite entertaining, such as one envisioning a merging of animal and people tagging, with the RFID tags being used to track the food people eat.
Two points I’d like to make about the comments on top of those in recent posts:
1. There are some interesting site links, which provide a sense of the government’s commitment to seeing the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) come to fruition. One site, by the Arkansas Animal Producer’s Association, provides an interesting run-down on what is happening at the state level—which is where the real action is occurring on NAIS. There we learn that Indiana, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Texas either have mandated implementation or are close to mandating implementation. Vermont is credited with putting off USDA, with several other states resisting.
There’s also a page with a contract between the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission and the USDA that the Animal Producer’s Association says makes NAIS mandatory rather than voluntary.
2. While I poked fun yesterday at those turned on by the potential investment opportunities in the RFID companies I wrote about, I also want to say that I’m not against health-related technology. Some of the uses to which RFID chips have been employed, like tracking river-running salmon or Alzheimer’s patients, seem like appropriate application of technology. Several of the comments, like Julie’s, point out the obvious attraction of using RFID to reduce the chances of one’s child being kidnapped, although she aptly points out the “top this” tendencies that can interfere.
What bothers me is the intensity of the focus on technology. I happened to stumble on a page describing a healthcare conference put on by Harvard Business School students last month—presumably the future leaders of America’s healthcare industry. It’s all about medical devices, commercial opportunities in stem cell research, and trends in biotech–and nothing about trends in holistic health or related topics.
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