Due to melamine scare that made people world wide prefer not to buy Chinese-made products, an e-mail informing consumers how to identify products from China by their barcodes are being forwarded recently.
In this e-mail, it informs readers to differentiate each country’s products by the first 3 digits of the bar code. It states: products made in China starts with barcode: 690/691/692.
However, Chan Chee Kong, a senior technician says it is not true. He cited an example: his Chinese cooking wines bore the Singapore-assigned prefix 888, despite being labeled as a product of China.