Non-disclosed data

I've been thinking about this for a few years. Not all the time you must understand as I would have reached a conclusion by now. More of it has startled to assemble into coherent thought in recent months and now I feel I need to write some of it down.

I recently attended a Traceability Interoperability Summit in Denver, Colorado and many of the presentations touched on this. See: http://www.traceinterop.com/

What really made me think was a powerful presentation by a mother who had lost a son due to food contamination. We collectively have got our understanding of data ownership mangled somewhere in our development as a society.

I think I now believe that for some products there are certain attributes of products that should be out there in the public domain as core pieces of information which are currently not shared. These are as core to a product as its colour, weight, water content etc. In the food safety arena knowing where something came from is vital in the event of a problem.