Almost every item you purchase in a store will have a barcode sticker. For many, this is a meaningless piece of paper that can only be dealt with by a special device. Meanwhile, the barcode contains important information that can be useful to the buyer.
Instructions
Step 1
You can find out the product by the barcode, country of origin and information about some important characteristics of this product by analyzing the numbers that are applied directly under the strokes. Today, the most popular is the European 13-bit EAN-13 code, which is found on most of the product labels in Russia.
Step 2
The first two or three digits contain the country code of the manufacturer. This code is permanent and unique for a given country and is assigned by the International Trade Association EAN. So, the numbers 00-09 will mean that the product is made in the USA or Canada, 30-37 - in France, 400-440 - in Germany. The countries of the former USSR and Russia are coded under the numbers 460-469, China - 690-692, 729 - Israel, 80-83 - Italy. Each country that supplies its goods for export has its own code, which is indicated by the first digits.
Step 3
Through a small but noticeable gap in the barcode, the next 4 or 5 digits represent the code of the company where this product is manufactured. This code will be four digits for countries with 3 digits and five digits for those with two digits.
Step 4
The following five-digit code refers directly to the qualities of the product itself. The first digit means the name of the product, the second - its consumer properties, the third - the size or weight of the product, the fourth - the composition of the ingredients, the fifth - the color code. The sixth digit, located a little further away, is a control one and is necessary to determine the authenticity of the goods.
Step 5
You can determine the authenticity of the goods by the checksum yourself. To do this, add up all the numbers that are in even places, and multiply this amount by 3. Remember the resulting number. Then add the numbers in odd places and add the resulting amount to the one that you remembered before. Discard whole tens from this number and subtract the remaining prime number from 10, the remainder must match the check digit of the code. Otherwise, this product is counterfeit and illegally produced.
