A better example of diffusion is the movement of honey into the market place. A producer sells his/her honey to two or three packers in one or two countries. The packers blend the honey from a variety of producers and send it to retail stores and bakeries all over the place. With the increasing risk of contaminated honey reaching the market, it is in everyones' interest to have a system that can quickly track the product back to the primary producer. The beef industry in Canada is in the process of implementing a system where each producer is required to attach a bar code to the ear of each animal at birth. If an animal should test positive for mad cow disease(KJ) at slaughter,the bar code will allow government officials to immediatly identify the herd from which it originated. This not only helps protect the consumer, but may prevent financial catastrophe in the beef industry. I would be interested to know what procedures various countries have in place to track honey to its origin. If a bakery had customers falling ill, and it was determined that the cause was the honey used in their muffins, how long would it take to pinpoint the source, assuming their honey supplier packs ten million pounds per year from a variety of sources? Producer-packers in Canada are encouraged to put lot numbers on each barrel packed but I don't know anyone who does so. Is there an inexpensive machine that will apply permanant codes to glass and plastic? This would be much more convient than making up seperate labels. Ted