Greg Blonder writes in Business Week about how a tracking system meshed into our existing food distribution networks would identify toxic or infectious dangers in their early stages, communicate their various locations, then support a rapid reaction before the threat spreads, thus intercepting pandemics or poisonings before they spiral out of control.

I’m all for any system that accurately markets food safety — not like the implied safe food messages littering grocery store shelves and the publications of the food pornographers. Such a system would compel everyone beginning on the farm right through to the fork to take microbial food safety seriously, rather than sugar-coat the topic with happy talk and turn a blind eye when poop gets on the food.

Blonder  goes on:

"We already have at hand much of the logistics infrastructure and technology that such a system would require. Radio Frequency Identification tags have reached a degree of sophistication where, if we wanted to, we could bar-code all food—whether tomatoes grown on an Amish farm outside town or broccoli from Mexico.

Similarly, sensor technology that lets us tag gold nanoparticles with DNA or miniaturized spectrometers has attained enough sensitivity that we can accurately identify a wide range of dangerous bacteria and toxic chemicals by smell or even color. If we communicated the collected data via the Internet, expert systems could then quickly identify unusual disease trends.

Aside from protection against bioterrorism, such a system would offer enough value to justify its cost through improved logistics. Local restaurants and grocery stores could provide assurance they were offering safe food—even food free of accidental E. coli contaminations.

Your supermarket could advertise: "Each morning we rescan every product in our aisles to assure you our produce is free of 27 diseases. And we can tell you the exact farm where it was grown. Enjoy!"

And don’t eat poop.