Heard about pink meth? Maybe it's an old story.

WICHITA, Kan. — It may fall a shade shy of catching thieves red-handed, but for farmers fed up with methamphetamine (search) cooks filching their fertilizer, staining them pink will do just fine.

Assuming you can discourage thieves you cannot easily catch, a new product called GloTell — which is added to tanks of anhydrous ammonia — will not only besmirch the hands of those who touch the fertilizer, but leaves its mark on anyone who snorts or shoots the end product.

And in the two years it took to develop GloTell, researchers at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale found it did much more than just stain thieves pink.

The visible stain, even if washed off, was still detectable by ultraviolet light 24 to 72 hours later. As an added benefit, the additive helped farmers detect any tank leaks, said Truitt Clements, spokesman for Illinois-based GloTell Distributors LLC.

Best of all, the treated anhydrous ammonia rendered any meth it was used to make extremely difficult to dry and turned it an unbleachable pink, he said.