Comment by sharps_xp

But will it by ciphered by the manufacturer?

Tons of products already have all manner of information printed on them, but only the manufacturer can readily decrypt it.

This is a really good video explaining it. There is a good opportunity for someone more enterprising than I to stand up some infrastructure to support it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R32j6ZA3byI

That's bad ass

USDA inspected foods already carry markers with lot codes and factory identifiers. That is how food traceability works right now. Those values are pretty opaque to consumers though. The new 2D barcode rules seem to suggest that there will be a human readable value for the "Plant" that worked a food item, but I'm having difficulty cross referencing how this actually plays out. My reading is that the human readable value is only necessary for the next step in the chain, so a packaging company can partially obscure the human readable location value for the harvester, for example, though they will have a Plant code identifier of some sort.

If companies have a way of obscuring this info to end consumers while still meeting FDA obligations, they absolutely will, as they currently do for things like the information for companies who "Make" products right now, which are often holding companies meant to obscure business relationships.

Oh, and any human readable value will be obscured behind a QR code anyway, so all the humans who already do zero investigation to understand where their stuff comes from will continue to have no extra information.

Strict labeling laws around protected terms is an essential thing because so many people read nothing more than the packaging itself when shopping. All chicken lists "No hormones" as an advertisement despite that being law and no chicken sold will ever have those hormones.

In the US I also want to know State of Origin. Not all state food and agricultural department regulations and inspections are the same.

"Should" or "are required to?"

The places I worked over 15 years ago had extensive lists of allergens. They were mostly chain or corporate, I think the mom and pop places did a little guessing. I wouldn’t trust them.

You might like the UK. The place is wall to wall with allergen lists.

I’m very sorry to hear that, but I don’t think restaurants have to be forced to deal with that. The only thing I could support is “if revenue >X then allergen disclosure is mandatory”. I know personally multiple little shops that had to refuse customers, because that’s extra hassle and responsibility that they can’t afford to deal with.

They manage here in the UK.

When entering, "any allergens or intolerances" is normally asked before you're sat down. They distinguish the two to decide whether a station clean is required or if they can just point you to the menu.

If it's not already clear on the menu, most medium/large chains then hand you a tablet letting you filter by almost anything.

Alternately, they could truthfully state what allergens are in literally all of their foods, and then people who are allergic to them can safely avoid them, which is what you're expecting them to do now except without actually saying which allergens they are.

In forty years I have very rarely seen menus change substantially.

If you are working with food you should know about allergies. It just comes with the territory. I’m baffled by how this is somehow too hard for US folks yet we manage fine.

The rest of the world has been able to solve that issue

Very, very poorly enforced and followed.

That isn't for restaurants.

Meat is already tracked to its origin. They can track a specific box to the farmer and supplier.

Anytime there would be a recall, they would include the lot number and manufacturer dates.

Source: I worked in meat packing and boutique butcher shops.

Edit: even things like ground beef from trimmings, we would write down every lot that went into it

Tyson and Smithfield are the worst two brands in the USA that you can get any meat from.

So you're saying that this type of regulation would force the food industry to start caring about whether their food comes from? That sounds like an argument in favor of it, not against it

trying to convert a massive meatpacking plan isn't step 1. it's too big a problem. that's top down. probably easier bottom up -- have a processing plant that only sources from ranchers that grass feed/finish, pasture raise, and slowly subsidize other ranchers to stop sending their product to massive meatpacking plants.

also the canonical example of a commodity. Basically the claim that all units are fully fungible.

Restaurants are one of the classic immigrant paths to upward mobility. We don't want to make that too hard.

By all means, get a license, food handler permit, etc. and know and practice good food safety, and buy ingredients from legitimate wholesalers. But at some point you don't have visibility into the supply chain and it's not reasonable to expect Joe's Taco Truck to know which specific farms produced their lettuce.

Knowing the sources of the food we eat is a very popular thing right now.

Isn't the capitalist way to help with this to build new restaurants that do openly provide the lineage for the food that they sell?

All of the consumers who are motivated by this information will then be free to reward these eateries with their business.

After that: Other restaurateurs will surely notice how unspeakably profitable these loyal consumers are and will begin to mimic the effort to try to capture a slice of the pie.

Ultimately, this snowballs into information being the norm instead of the rare exception. Everyone wins!

(Or, more likely: We'll broadly forget that we cared about any of this a few months from now, just as we have always done in the past, and the idea will die at the invisible hand of the free market.)