A technology used to track everything from cattle and bottles of Viagra to U.S. military weapons will soon be tested on an unlikely candidate for surveillance: tomatoes.

The Hawai'i Department of Agriculture will roll out a three-year pilot project this month to track and trace tomatoes and other produce using radio frequency identification technology. The system uses microchips with paper-thin antennae stuck onto produce boxes that emit radio waves when scanned.

While the technology is being used by a few supermarkets and farms across the nation, Hawai'i would be the first state to test RFID from farm to market in hopes of improving food safety.

Sandra Lee Kunimoto, chairwoman of the state Board of Agriculture, said the ability to determine where food comes from and where it has been distributed will become even more important as the food supply continues to be globalized.

In the event of a recall, the state wants to be able to trace a product to the farm of origin and identify where inventories were sent — all within a few minutes.

The state said the system also will help improve quality and freshness, as well as create a database of all produce being shipped and sold.

Four farms across Hawai'i — ranging from a small farm on the Big Island to a 2,000-acre multi-crop operation on O'ahu — will soon tag boxes and pallets of everything from lettuce to strawberries.

LIMITLESS POSSIBILITIES

John Ryan, administrator for the program at the state Agriculture Department, said he hopes that costs will eventually come down to a point where RFID would be adopted by many of the 5,000 farms in Hawai'i, and beyond.

"Our goal here really is to develop a model that hopefully many other states can use," he said.

Ryan said the possibilities combining RFID and produce are almost limitless.

Individual fruits and vegetables could one day be tagged with tiny RFID labels with ID numbers that would allow consumers to access information through the state's online database.

They could determine what pesticides were used on their Maui pineapple or verify their pricey Kona coffee beans were actually from the Big Island. They also could find out when their mangoes from O'ahu's North Shore were harvested and how long they have been on the shelf.

The state is partnering with Motorola Inc., Lowry Computer Products Inc. and GlobeRanger Inc. The state also is working with the University of Hawai'i to develop biosensors that could test for contaminants, such as E. coli and salmonella.

Joe White, a vice president in Motorola's RFID division in Maryland, said there was growing interest worldwide, especially from Europe and Asia, in tracking produce.

With RFID, "I know who touched it, when they touched it and where it went throughout the whole supply chain," he said.

The technology dates to World War II, when Britain put transponders in Allied aircraft to help radar crews distinguish them from German fighters. In 2003, the U.S. Department of Defense and Wal-Mart mandated that suppliers radio tag all crates and cartons, giving RFID a major boost.

A PRIVACY ISSUE?

Katherine Albrecht, co-author of "Spychips" and founder of CASPIAN, an anti-RFID group, said she's not against using the technology to track produce in bulk. However, the possibility of tagging individual fruits and vegetables raises serious consumer privacy issues.

"It's crossing the line in the sand. Once you begin seeing them appear on individual consumer items, you open up a whole Pandora's Box to track individuals," she said.

Albrecht says microchips could be embedded in virtually everything, such as ID cards and clothing, allowing the government, corporations and others to track people wherever they go, from a distance.

She also expressed concerns about the possibility of the label being accidentally consumed and having a state project that supports and advances RFID technology.

The state says it's all an effort to improve food safety standards, not to track people or eating habits.

In March 2007, eight people in Hawai'i were sickened with E. coli after consuming contaminated lettuce. It took months for health officials to pinpoint the source, which was a Kaua'i farm that had been flooded by stormwater runoff from a nearby cattle pasture.

An E. coli outbreak in 2006 killed three people and sickened hundreds nationwide before the bacteria was traced back to contaminated spinach from Central California.

"During that time lapse, you've exposed the industry," Ryan said. "Everybody is taking losses in the supply chain, not just the guilty farm."

TRACKING IS VITAL

Letitia Uyehara of Armstrong Produce, a partner in the state project and one of the largest produce distributors in Hawai'i, said the spinach industry has still not recovered.

"Now, there's a big push to be able to trace back the contaminated stuff," she said.

Uyehara said RFID will also help Armstrong with efficiency and inventory controls. The thousands of boxes that arrive at Armstrong Produce daily from farms across the world are now manually tagged by hand with bar code stickers and individually scanned.

With the technology, portals can automatically read entire pallets of produce, tagged by farmers, as they are loaded and unloaded at Armstrong's gates.

Uyehara said RFID wasn't adopted by the food industry earlier because of cost.

In its trial, the state is supplying the RFID labels, which cost about 17 cents apiece, and handheld readers that run nearly $3,000 each.

If the program is successful, farmers would be the ones who would likely have to absorb the costs of the tags and readers, cutting into their slim profits. But they may be forced into adopting RFID if distributors and retailers start demanding it.

Ryan predicts the cost of the passive tags eventually will drop to a few pennies each. They used to cost nearly $2 apiece in 1999, but rising demand and production of microchips have driven prices down.

Ryan is in discussions with AT&T and Motorola to develop a low-cost wireless phone equipped with an RFID reader.

"When it gets to that point, I'll have a high level of adoption," he said.

But he's already drawing strong interest.

"I've got more farms volunteering than we can handle," Ryan said.

Alan Takemoto, executive director of the Hawai'i Farm Bureau, said the state's project will help determine if RFID would be economically feasible for farmers. The 1,600-member group is partnering with the state in the RFID trial.

"We're trying to stay ahead of the game," he said.

Takemoto said the ability to use high technology to trace foods adds great value to premium products grown in Hawai'i.

One of the state's primary concerns about using RFID on produce is accuracy. RFID tags can be read through almost anything, except water and metal. Tomatoes and other produce that are primarily water could absorb the electromagnetic signals.

To prevent misreadings, pallets will be tagged in addition to individual boxes.

"That's kind of a weak approach to try to get a 100-percent read, but it's the only way so far," Ryan said.

The state, which is planning a mock recall in June, has received $500,000 in grants so far and is seeking an additional $1.1 million to complete the three-year program.