Pressure is on grower-shippers to find solutions for radio frequency identification device tagging, and the Produce Marketing Association hopes that a new effort to create a central database to share the latest information will help.

The biggest challenge for radio frequency identification devices is to find ways for them to work at the pallet level, said PMA's Gary Fleming. "There's a lot of misconceptions] out there."

While some retailers are directing all pallets and cases be tagged, the reality is that passive RFID does not well on pallets because they are too weak to read. The system can work well when cases are moving on conveyer belts, he said, but fails to transmit key information on the pallet.

More expensive active tags are likely the solution, but grower-shippers would have to shoulder the added costs, he said.

PMA is tracking RFID issues for the produce industry and has created a task force to develop a database that will share the challenges and possible solutions with its members. PMA is hoping to load it by March 1, and start sharing the data with the public in mid-summer. That way, companies can look to their peers for information on what works.

Mr. Fleming said that one solution for users of reusable plastic containers is tags that are molded into the containers and can be used multiple times, thus reducing costs.

RPC makers continue to explore cost-effective technologies. IPL Products Ltd., headquartered in St. Damien, Quebec, Canada, said that it was ready to move ahead with RFIDs for reusable plastic containers but has been plagued by a series of false starts.

IPL cast itself as the leader in innovation in 2000 when Georgia Pacific Corp. announced it was working with IPL to become the first company in the produce packaging industry to commercially use long-range RFID tags in a high-volume application. But everyone is in a holding pattern as companies wait until the tags can comply with "generation 2" standards, which replace six-year-old technology that is now obsolete, said Chris MacGrory of IPL, a manufacturer of RPCs.

Mr. MacGrory said that answers to a cost-effective RFID system for produce distribution might come from the automotive industry. One of the technologies being developed is insert molding, which would give the company the ability to mold antennae around the perimeter of a container and protect it from temperature changes and handling abuses.

It also would allow containers to carry one tag instead of two, which has always been expensive to manage. In this way, the reader could pick up the container no matter how it is placed on a pallet and the shippers would not end up with damaged tags.