Will Barcodes And Smartphones Make Food Labels Obsolete 

/EINPresswire.com/ April 05, 2011 - San Francisco CA - Printed food labels with their space limitations do not have the capacity to provide the detailed information today's consumers require. Electronic product information does not have the same space limitation and with its more flexible format has the greater potential to meet the needs of today's consumers. 

With the rise of online grocery shopping, smartphones and the ability of phone apps to interpret this information, consumers are rapidly migrating to electronic product information. Imagine using your smartphone to automatically alert you if a scanned product contains ingredients you want to avoid or using your computer to enter a UPC code to retrieve all the information you need to make an informed decision before buying.

Unfortunately the lack of regulations and standardization make electronic product information inconsistent and in some cases risky for consumers. The frequency with which products change ingredients and how these changes are addressed is a major stumbling block to the supremacy of electronic product information. Whether it will displace conventional food labels is largely dependent on the creation of regulations and standardized data to deal with the issue of accuracy. 

GS1 (Global Standard One) USA and GS1 Canada, which regulate barcodes in North America, are aware consumers use mobile devices to access more detailed information about products and are aware of the problem with standardization. Barcodes themselves have very little data attached to them but they can allow users to access "Electronic Product Catalogs" which may contain such information as electronic ingredient lists. GS1 USA and GS1 Canada has formed B2CAlliance to build consumer confidence in this information.

Strangely absent from this business to consumer alliance are the consumer and the FDA.  The potential risk of a one sided solution and the importance of electronic product information to the future of commerce requires input from more than one organization. The FDA certainly will want to maintain its authority over food labels, electronic or conventional. In any event the FDA has already been petitioned to regulate some electronic versions of food labels.

The issue of accuracy if properly addressed will turn electronic labels into a superior alternative to conventional food labels. The technology is here but the regulatory structure unfortunately is not.