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Melamine Scared? Made in China or Not, Look at the Barcode

October 11th, 2008   
Topics: Current Events, Resources, Something for the Brain     
Identify Made in China Products using barcodes and avoid melamine tainted milk

Do you know that in the absence of a package label stating what country a particular product was made in, you could always consult the product’s package barcode to determine this missing piece of important information?

A popular quip has it that “In the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth; and everything else was made in China”.

Quite funny but true. I really don’t have to move an inch just to prove it. My laptop was made in China. And so does the chair that I’m sitting in right now. The ramen noodles that I ate for breakfast was also made in China. Even the underwear I’m wearing was manufactured in China!

Chinese products here, there, and everywhere. Yes I know that without them, I would have otherwise had to spend at least PhP250 for this 50 pesos shorts I’m wearing right now have I not bought it from a made in china flea shop in Subic. China have definitely made this world a cheaper place to live in. But at a huge cost.

Last year, China made it to the world headlines a number of times courtesy of their substandard and contaminated products. Products ranging from lead-painted toys, toxic toothpaste, chemical-laden seafood, unsafe tires, and counterfeited medicines among others were have to be recalled because of the risks they pose to their consumer’s health and welfare.

And this year, China have once again proved to the world that its really a headline superstar when it comes to unsafe products, thanks to its Melamine tainted milk that have already killed a number of babies and hospitalized thousands more.

I’m sure many of you would want to avoid made in China milks for fear of melamine contamination. And knowing the strings of product-safety related issues Chinese consumer goods have been through, you are probably more paranoid now about the products that you buy at the supermarket, counter checking the country where they were produced (like making sure that that choco chip cookie was not made from China).

But have you noticed how many products don’t have packaging labels stating what country they’re made from? I’m not sure if this practice is intentionally done by nasty manufacturers trying to hide something. But its really quite disappointing to find out, after looking at all sides of that box of cookie, that there’s no Manufactured from label.

The answer is not in the box, its in the barcode


This is actually a very easy step to do. By simply looking at the barcode and checking the first 3 digits, you would know a product’s point of origin.

Products made from China begins at numbers 690 - 695.

A barcode of a made in China product begins with digits 690 to 695.

Meanwhile, products made from the Philippines meanwhile starts at 480.

Barcode of a made in the Philippines product starts with 480.


Below is a complete list of the different Universal Product Code prefix numbers assigned for different countries.

EAN•UCC
Prefixes		 Country ISO
country code
00 to 13 UCC (USA & Canada) us/ca
20 to 29 In-store numbers
30 to 37 GENCOD-EAN France fr
380 BCCI (Bulgaria) bg
383 EAN Slovenija si
385 EAN Croatia hr
387 EAN-BIH (Bosnia-Herzegovina) ba
400 to 440 CCG (Germany) de
45 + 49 Distribution Code Center DCC (Japan) jp
460 to 469 UNISCAN - EAN Russia (Russian Federation) ru
471 EAN Taiwan tw
474 EAN Estonia ee
475 EAN Latvia lv
476 EAN Azerbaijan az
477 EAN Lithuania lt
478 EAN Uzbekistan uz
479 EAN Sri Lanka lk
480 PANC (Philippines) ph
481 EAN Belarus by
482 EAN Ukraine ua
484 EAN Moldova md
485 EAN Armenia am
486 EAN Georgia ge
487 EAN Kazakhstan kz
489 HKANA (Hong-Kong) hk
50 e.centre gb
520 EAN HELLAS (Greece) gr
528 EAN Lebanon lb
529 EAN Cyprus cy
531 EAN-MAC (FYR Macedonia) mk
535 EAN Malta mt
539 EAN Ireland ie
54 EAN Belgium.Luxembourg be/lu
560 CODIPOR (Portugal) pt
569 EAN Iceland is
57 EAN Danmark dk
590 EAN Poland pl
594 EAN Romania ro
599 EAN Hungary hu
600 - 601 EAN South Africa za
      608 EAN Bahrain

bh 048
609 EAN Mauritius mu
611 EAN Maroc (Morocco) ma
613 EAN Algerie (Algeria) dz
616 EAN Kenya ke
619 Tunicode (Tunisia) tn
621 EAN Syria sy
622 EAN Egypt eg
624 EAN Libya ly
625 EAN Jordan jo
626 EAN Iran ir
627 EAN Kuwait kw
628 EAN Saudi Arabia sa
629 EAN Emirates ae
64 EAN Finland fi
690 - 695 Article Numbering Centre of China - ANCC cn
70 EAN Norge (Norway) no
729 Israeli Bar Code Association - EAN Israel il
73 EAN Sweden se
740 EAN Guatemala gt
741 EAN El Salvador sv
742 EAN Honduras hn
743 EAN Nicaragua ni
744 EAN Costa Rica cr
745 EAN Panama pa
746 EAN Republica Dominicana do
750 AMECE (Mexico) mx
759 EAN Venezuela ve
76 EAN Switzerland ch
770 IAC (Colombia) co
773 EAN Uruguay uy
775 EAN Peru pe
777 EAN Bolivia bo
779 CODIGO - EAN Argentina ar
780 EAN Chile cl
784 EAN Paraguay py
786 ECOP (Ecuador) ec
789 - 790 EAN Brasil br
80 to 83 INDICOD (Italy) it
84 AECOC (Spain) es
850 Camera de Comercio de la Republica de Cuba cu
858 EAN Slovakia sk
859 EAN Czech cz
860 EAN YU (Yugoslavia) yu
867 EAN DPR Korea (North Korea) kp
869 UCCET (Turkey) tr
87 EAN Nederland nl
880 EAN Korea (South Korea) kr
885 EAN Thailand th
888 SANC (Singapore) sg
890 EAN India in
893 EAN Vietnam vn
899 EAN Indonesia id
90 - 91 EAN Austria at
93 EAN Australia au
94 EAN New Zealand nz
955 EAN Malaysia my
958 EAN Macau mo
977 Periodicals (ISSN)
978 - 979 Books (ISBN)
980 Refund receipts
981 - 982 Common currency coupons
99 Coupons

3 Comments

greenminds Said,
October 24th, 2008 @3:30 pm  

Hi, actually that is not reliable. Sometimes, the bar code shows where the product was repacked, not manufactured.

So a product with a bar code starting with 480 doesn’t necessarily mean it is manufactured here in the Philippines.

mygif
jonathan Said,
October 27th, 2008 @5:07 pm  

Hello greenminds. Yup, I noticed that too. Whats more, a day after writing this post, I found myself in the middle of a supermarket checking out barcodes of various made in China products. And not all of them have the prescribed barcode prefix!

But the important thing is, it gives us one more way to determine whether a product was made in China or not, irregardless if it’ll match or not. This is especially useful in the light of all these public deception that some greedy Chinese manufacturers have been committing.

Thanks for visiting the blog btw. ;)

mygif
greenminds Said,
November 3rd, 2008 @10:28 pm  

Yup, as a rule for me. If the bar code says it’s from China, then no way. If it says not from china, or its not clear, I have to double check.

Nice site, btw :)

mygif

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