Customers will read barcoded food labels in Digital India

FSSAI issues guidelines for providing information in barcodes.

Now information about the manufacturer of packaged food in the barcode itself.

Barcode means dense information about any product which can be seen in vertical lines. It can be obtained with a special scanner to get all the information about the scanned product. Like what are the ingredients in the product. When was it made? When is its last date of use. Who is marketing it? And who is its manufacturer ? However, apart from the barcode, this information has been written on the back of the product till now.

Now FSSAI has made a new amendment and removed many of the information which were earlier required to be written on the back of the product. The same information is going to be limited to barcode. This means that you will now get the information about the manufacturer written on the back of the food product in the barcode.

FSSAI and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) have now started accepting this. That all Indian have smart phones and all smart phones have been equipped with smart barcode scanner.

So that they can get information about any food and packaged food product by scanning the barcode. And all of them can read, write and understand the English language. In such a situation, efforts are being made to hide the information written on the product. Which is a fraud on the consumer in some way or the other. In such a situation this question also arises. The food items which come in small packing.

Will their barcode work? Or it can be scanned from your mobile. Once again this amendment of FSSAI seems to have been taken in the interest of corporate. Because this does not seem to be a matter of consumer awareness in any way.

Rather, it will keep consumers even more in the dark. The irony is that this guideline will be applicable only to food items sold within India. And for export, all these manufacturers will have to print their product information completely on the product packaging as before. In such a situation, it becomes natural to doubt the intentions of FSSAI officials.

At present, information about the manufacturer of the product has been removed from the packing of packaged food products and limited to barcode. Which will be applicable to many more information in future. Even today consumers depend on advertisements for information about their products.

In such a situation, give information in barcode. Will take the consumer even further into darkness. And such amendments will further widen the gap between consumer and product information. And the existing food safety rules and constitution will be changed with many new guidelines.

Which will create a new problem for any consumer, especially the conscious consumers. And similar guidelines can be applied to other products as well. In which the rule system will be ignored in the name of similar guidelines on electronics, hardware etc.

In such a situation, food public awareness, consumer awareness forums and consumer protection people, NGOs and organizations should come forward to withdraw such amendments and respond to these amendments. Common citizens should also be informed. How common citizens are being deprived of their consumer rights.

Foodmen has always been advocating the use of local language or Hindi language on the packaging of food products. And expresses strong objection to this amendment of FSSAI.