Do the Barcodes on Products Reveal the Country of Origin?
Filed under Food Safety | Comments (11)
There's an e-mail alert circulating on the Internet that claims you can tell a food product's country of origin by looking at the first three numbers of the bar code. For example, the alert says that all barcodes ranging from 690 to 695 indicate products made in China and that barcodes beginning with 471 indicate products made in Taiwan.
Given the concern over food made in China these days, this e-mail is quickly making its rounds on the Internet, so I decided to check it out. Unfortunately, it turns out that finding out a food product's country of origin is not as simple as the e-mail alert claims.
According to Snopes, the first three digits of the barcode merely indicate in which country the barcode was assigned, not in which country the product was produced.
So, for example, a company that is based in Switzerland but has a manufacturing plant in China would have a Swiss barcode.
It's becoming increasingly difficult to figure out where our food comes from, as Sara Bongiorni, author of "A Year Without Made in China," found out when she tried to eliminate all Chinese products from her family's shopping list for one year. A CNN article about her experiment states:
The United States requires labels on seafood to mark where it came from. However, that's the exception. With most foods, companies are not required to label where ingredients come from, only where the food was packaged or processed.
That means it is possible a frozen dinner, for example, could have 20 different ingredients from 20 different countries, food analysts say.
So how about you? Are you trying to avoid food from China or is it so difficult to do so that you don't even try?
This is the list that was in the email that I received:
However, you may now refer to the barcode, remember if the first 3 digits is 690-695 then it is Made in China .
00 ~ 13 USA & CANADA
30 ~ 37 FRANCE
40 ~ 44 GERMANY
49 ~ JAPAN
50 ~ UK
57 ~ Denmark
64 ~ Finland
76 ~ Switzerland and Lienchtenstein
628 ~ Saudi-Arabien
629 ~ United Arab Emirates
740 ~ 745 - Central America
All 480 Codes are Made in the Philippines.
you are an IDIOT kafirlily. didnt you read this article?? THE FIRST THRE DIGITS DOES NOT TELL YOU WHERE THE FOOD WAS MADE
what a freaking doormat you are. grow a brain.
It is the right of the consumer to know the origin of the product he/she going to buy. To protect the interest of the people there should some regulatory requirements but unfortunately nothing is in place. It is more unfortunate that many well known multinational companies like 'Nestle' doesn’t have such transparency in their portfolio. We hope something will come up to protect the interest of the consumer.
Thomas
It is the right of the consumer to know the origin of the product he/she going to buy. To protect the interest of the people there should some regulatory requirements but unfortunately nothing is in place. It is more unfortunate that many well known multinational companies like 'Nestle' doesn’t have such transparency in their portfolio. We hope something will come up to protect the interest of the consumer.
Thomas
Why thomas? So you can discriminate against products from a country? So you can ruin the economy of a country based on what you hear on fox news?
What if countries stopped buying our US products because of the misconception that all we do, each and every single one of us is to fund war?
Misconceptions are powerful and crippling. Though you are right about the regulatory requirements.
What i'm trying to say is your message came across as one that would stop buying Chinese products over what you hear on fox, stop interacting with Mexicans because of swine flu. The examples go on.
It's pretty much the same as the guy giving you an interview for a job asking you your race, history and where your parents were born. It is useful for quite a few things but in the situation it is seemed more damaging than useful.
Get a life Max !.........Go and have a look at the way things are made, and the living conditions of folk producing them.... Also the sanitation involved in their production......You COULD be amazed,,,,,,,,,,,,Are you happy to become one?
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I know that due to the intricacy of the system my request might not be of any help; but nevertheless I would dearly love to get hold of the list of bar codes and their numbers that will tell me at least where the food product I'll purchase is bottled or packaged. Can somebody help? please.
thank you
daniel