Here’s a far-out, Digital-Age concept -- even if George Orwell came up with some version of it decades ago: The United States Department of Agriculture has been working on a little-known program called the National Animal Identification System, developed in cahoots with agribusiness trade groups representing the likes of Monsanto and Cargill. It encourages all animal owners and livestock handlers to attach 15-digit numeric codes embedded in microchips and other tags to their furry friends so that they can be monitoried throughout their lives by a central computerized nework.

The objective, according to a recent Grist.org article, "is to create a comprehensive high-tech tracking system that would eventually know the whereabouts of every cow, llama, hog, catfish, ostrich, and other farm critter in the nation so that animal-borne diseases such as avian flu, mad cow, and foot-and-mouth disease could be easily and systematically kept in check."

In other words, when an animal is discovered to be a carrier of the disease, this system could track every location it had been in through the course of its life and the other animals that may have come into contact with it; those exposed could then be killed before the disease spread like wildfire.

It’s not so much the animal rights people that are concerned about it (they think it might even be more humane than branding and other primitive forms of animal tracking), it's the small farmers who worry it will push them off their farms.

Photo: Grist.org / iStockphoto