Alberta Agriculture Teams with Prairie Heritage Beef to Test IdentiGEN’s DNA TraceBack™ Meat Traceability Program

EDMONTON, Alberta, and LAWRENCE, Kan., U.S., Oct. 22, 2008 – The Government of Alberta’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (ARD) is collaborating with Prairie Heritage Beef Producers, IdentiGEN North America and Quality Foods, a British Columbia-based grocery retail chain, on a pilot program to test a DNA technology that scientifically tracks beef from the ranch to the retail store.

The pilot program with Prairie Heritage’s 14 family ranches in Western Canada supports ARD’s commitment to partnering with industry to develop effective meat traceability systems and increase the value of Alberta-produced meat with Canadian consumers and in export markets. ARD is the one of the first Canadian entities to test DNA TraceBack™, a proprietary meat identification and traceability system based on DNA analysis that is already in widespread use in Europe.

ARD is supportive of this leading-edge technology for meat traceability to bolster the competitive position of its meat industry.

“One of our key goals is to form collaborative relationships with producers to create value and provide accountability to consumers through foolproof meat traceability,” said Jim Hansen, Business Development Officer, Beef Livestock Products, for Alberta Agriculture.  “This is a partnership that, above all, benefits the consumer. DNA is indisputable. It verifies product marketing claims, and it can pinpoint a product’s ranch of origin with total accuracy.”

“Quality Foods is extremely pleased and excited to be the first retailer in Canada involved with this innovative program,” says Ken Schley, Quality Foods’ director of operations. “Our customers will benefit by knowing that we have access to accurate and important details on how, when and where their food was produced. We feel that this offers consumers a level of confidence and assurance that Quality Foods is committed to customer service and food safety.”

The first phase of the two-phase pilot program involves DNA sampling of all Prairie Heritage cattle at the Prairie Heritage feedyard, and matching DNA samples of finished products at retail stores with these source animals. The second phase focuses on testing consumer reaction to traceability concepts at retail stores.

“DNA TraceBack is a well-known seal of authenticity throughout Ireland and in other parts of Europe,” said Donald R. Marvin, president and CEO of IdentiGEN North America. “It is uniquely suited to support the Canadian consumer’s demand for meat traceability.”

In 2007, Alberta beef production accounted for $3 billion (Canadian) of the $6.5 billion Canadian beef industry, or about 40 percent of Canada’s total beef production, according to industry sources. About 70 percent of all Canadian-raised cattle are finished in Alberta.

In May 2006, Alberta Agriculture and Food (AF) created a Traceability Branch in its Environment and Food Safety Sector to help protect the public interest in areas of food safety, emergency management and public health. The initiative focuses on collaboration between industry and government to create secure, sustainable, value-driven and networked traceability systems that prepare Alberta’s agriculture and food industries to respond to crises, emergencies and disease outbreaks in order to better compete and capture market opportunities.

IdentiGEN’s DNA TraceBack is a unique system that uses DNA analysis to support marketing of branded meat, to verify country of origin, and to validate marketing claims and product attributes. DNA TraceBack has additional value as a competitive positioning tool for retailers who want to build consumer trust in fresh meat products.

The DNA TraceBack® system has been approved by the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service as a Process Verified Program (PVP). Additional information can be found at processverified.usda.gov.

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About Prairie Heritage Beef

For information about Prairie Heritage Beef, visit www.prairieheritage.ca.

About Quality Foods

Quality Foods, Vancouver Island-owned and -operated since 1982, is an award-winning leader in the Canadian grocery industry, employing nearly 800 people in nine full-service grocery stores. QF’s tenth store opens in Powell River, BC, in the very near future. As one of Canada’s truly independent grocers, its distribution centre in Errington, BC, supplies these stores and several dozen smaller single-store operations across the island. Quality Foods is a growing company known for its unique innovations in taking care of customers and is a 2007 winner of the Canada’s 50 Best Managed Companies program. Additional information can be found at www.qualityfoods.com.

About IdentiGEN

IdentiGEN Ltd., with its North American subsidiary IdentiGEN, Inc., is a privately held, venture-backed company, and a leading provider of DNA-based solutions to the agriculture and food industries. The company was founded as a spinoff from the Institute of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin, where the company’s core area of expertise — genetic identification — was developed and is now being deployed in a variety of ways to enhance consumer confidence in the safety and quality of food products. Through IdentiGEN’s DNA-based TraceBack® system, retailers, meat processors, producers and local governments, for the first time, have the tools to unequivocally trace the identity of meat back to its source. Additional information about IdentiGEN can be found at www.identigen.com and www.dnatraceback.com.

Editor’s Note: A high-resolution photo of the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency eartag is available upon request.