Avian flu is currently only identifiable via visual means, such as discoloration of the beak, sneezing, diarrhea, or sudden death. However, using a biothermal chip and an RFID reader poultry farmers would be alerted to elevated temperatures in the flock, company executives say.
According to Kevin McGrath, president of Digital Angel, while a temperature spike in a single chicken may not be caused by avian flu, if a representative sampling of tagged birds had a temperature spike, it might be an indication of trouble.
"If you end up finding 20 to 30 sentinel birds with higher-than-normal temperature, that is an indicator that you may have an infection. If you wait till the bird population is dying, it is too late," McGrath said.
McGrath proposes tagging every 250th bird in a flock.
Digital Angel is in talks with health ministries in Asia that have expressed an interest in biothermal chips.