'729'
Barcode of Israel?
Alerts regarding identifying Israeli products by their barcode
have been circulated over the internet, one example is shown below:
Boycott '729' Barcode
Most of the products have a barcode to identify them. Each
barcode contains a lot of information such as the factory and
also the country where it is produced.
The following system is not necessarly waterproof but will certainly
allow you to screen a lot of products coming from Israël.
You can retrieve the list of these countries and the according
numbers on the internet.
Some examples :
383 EAN Slovenija
471 EAN Taiwan
Notice that these one have NOTHING to do with Israël.
A barcode starting with "729" indicates that this product
is produced in Israël
729 Israeli Bar Code Association - EAN Israel
Don't buy them if you want to protest against the current agression!!
Sometimes brands are misleading, a barcode never lies if it carries
that 729 !!!
Others have added more targets to the barcode boycott list:
The American ones start with 00 till 13.
But upon investigating the barcodes of know Israeli goods people
found the barcodes weren't always correct:
The Israeli bar code story is not so simple. I purchased several
food items from Israel to investigate which could be from the
occupied territories. The Achdut Tahini from Industrial Zone Barkan
(Occupied Territories) starts out: 7 219.... Pri-Vayerek Olives
from Industrial Zone Har Tov starts: 7 922... (Barbet (Jam)
imported from Israel by Supreme Foods of Concord Ont.: 6 507...)
I notice that foods from Sweden start out with either a 7 or
an 8, so there is no consistant labeling for some countries. As
a matter of fact, I notice that the first number is not consistantly
the same on goods from any particular country; foods from Canada
usually start with a 6, but not always.
There must be a better way to tell...
Then someone investigated what EAN (the barcode number) actually
mean. From the EAN international FAQ: http://www.ean-int.org/faqadc.html
Does the EAN number
indicate the country of origin of a product?
No, the numbering of a product with EAN numbers does not imply
any significance. An EAN number simply starts with the prefix
of the member organisation that has allocated a bank of numbers
to a company. This does not mean that the product was manufactured
in a specific country or by a specific manufacturer.
So where does this leave us?
We recommend you read all the labels and not rely on the barcode
as it clearly does not indicate the country of origin although
it might be accurate on many occasions.
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