This section is intended to introduce the reader to aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of the disclosure described herein and claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the disclosure described herein. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
Various techniques have been used for marking or tagging products in order to enable tracking the product or determining the source of a product under examination, such as the regulated cannabis or marijuana industry. For cannabis growers, harvesters, processors, distributors, and retailers, the current industry protocol is to physically attach or hang an identification tag, such as radio-frequency identification (RFID) labels, to the package of the cannabis seed, the stem or parts of a cannabis plant. In these known techniques, the tag is destroyed with product shipping or the transformation or conversion of the product into another form. Moreover, the tagging usually relates only to the source or identity of the respective product, and provides little or no information as to the history of the respective product. Further, during the chain of custody, the instance of counterfeiting, theft, or fraud increases wherein a human is in charge of physically attaching a tag and carrying over the same tag from a prior custodian or a new custodian, or creating a new tag for delivery to the new custodian. In addition, there are no means for clearly identifying where in a chain of custody the contents of a shipped marijuana product or package have been tampered with.
Hence, what is needed is an effective, low cost, and simple method of managing, identifying, and tracking of cannabis planting, growing, harvesting, processing and waste removal, packaging, distribution, retailing, and after-market product authentication by third parties, federal, and state regulatory agencies, among others.