Barcodes look mysterious. And every now and then an urban myth grows and develops about one or other of their numbers and/or stripes. The most enduring is that barcodes hold insider information about a product’s country of origin. It’s currently doing the rounds on Facebook again.
Here’s the real inside story from GS1 Australia:
Since 2008, a story originating from the US has been shared across international borders about the product scares involving melamine-tainted pet foods, lead-tainted toys, and melamine-tainted milk products – all originating in China.
“This started a chain reaction amongst consumers about the country of origin of any product, which is still on trend today. It re-emerges every few months through social media,” Maria Palazzolo, chief executive officer at GS1 Australia, stated.
“Consumers were led to believe that the first two to three digits of a product’s barcode would tell them where the product was made. This presumption was, and still is, fiction and completely incorrect.”
The country of origin has nothing to do with any of the digits of a GS1 Barcode. The GS1 Barcode is just about unique product identification.
All a GS1 Barcode does is uniquely identify a product using a product identification number (Global Trade Item Number or GTIN).
The barcode number is read by a scanner, processed into a number and is simply an access key to a database record that describes details of the product.
To ensure that barcode numbers are globally unique the GS1 organisation in each country has its own prefix number. GS1’s is 93, and it is the first number on the barcodes it allocates to subscribers. GS1 Barcodes beginning with 93 simply mean that the barcode number was sourced from GS1 Australia, regardless of where the product or its ingredients originated.
Government regulators such as Food Standard Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) dictate labelling requirements for all food products in Australia, so that consumers can make informed choices. These regulations are totally independent of the GS1 Barcodes.
“GS1 Barcodes allow companies all over the world to trade with each other using a common identification system and derive the benefits associated with the GS1 system, but they do not identify where the product was manufactured or from where it originated,” Palazzolo concluded.