Pilot program launches to keep track of meats’ origins

A label that can be scanned by a customer’s smartphone so he or she can identify the name of the farmer who raised the steer that became steaks in a store’s refrigerator case is being tested in a pilot project by Michigan State University Researchers.

Knowing exactly where their meat came from is becoming increasingly important to consumers, Donald Buskirk, associate professor of animal science at MSU, told the Kalamazoo Gazette.

Excerpt:

“Besides just tracking a single animal from birth to harvest, there can be up to 500 packages of meat in a single beef carcass, so trying to track that volume has a whole different set of issues,” Buskirk explained.

“That’s what this pilot project is going to help us do — refine the technology and refine the methods we use to be able to track beef through the entire system.”

For more on the tracking program, please read the rest of the story.

Source: Kalamazoo Gazette