Mad Cow Rules the Fate of Digital Angel

The outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, has been bad for the beef industry but good for Digital Angel (DOC Quote), which makes tracking devices that are implanted into animals.

Shares of the St. Paul, Minn.-based company have nearly doubled since the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Dec. 23 announcement that the first case of mad cow disease had been discovered in the U.S. While mad cow-related worries were the catalyst for investor interest, Digital Angel has been also stoking the fire by touting its radio frequency identification, or RFID, devices in a pair of press releases in response to media inquiries.

"The proprietary technology here is that they have the only [Food & Drug Administration] and USDA-approved implantable microchip in livestock, which is the size of a grain of rice and injected under the skin with a syringe," said David Talbot, managing director of Melhado, Flynn & Associates, a brokerage firm, and an investor in the company. "This enables you to track the animal and take their body temperature remotely, from a distance of 20 feet away." ...