Startup's stickers identify the source of food

[XemaSab]

At a farm in Manteca, in San Joaquin County, workers smack labels onto watermelons freshly cut from the vine, each sticker bearing a unique string of letters and numbers that identifies where they were harvested.

"With food safety as big as it is, we can give each watermelon its own code so a consumer can check on the Internet to see where it is grown," said Ryan Van Groningen of Van Groningen & Sons Farms, which sells watermelons under the Yosemite Fresh brand.

This new code, called the HarvestMark, is being developed by the Redwood City startup YottaMark Inc. at a time when Congress is considering food-safety legislation that could make some type of tracking system mandatory.

"In the event of a recall, the Food and Drug Administration can find out where a product came from and how it got to market," said YottaMark co-founder Elliott Grant.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/03/MNSK191072.DTL#ixzz0N97xrQQx