China Crisis

Back in the day, almost everything was "made in Japan," which we later learned, was a good thing. Now, everything's made in China. The land of cheap multinational labor, cheap consumer retail, and oft times cheap quality as well. Sometimes, dangerous even. The recent Melamine fiasco raised a lot of paranoid brouhaha over China-branded products. Which brings us to ponder how can we tell if a product is made in China or not? Simple. Read the barcode. I know your next question is.. "How the hell do you do that?" Simple. The first three digits in a barcode is the country code of the product's origin. Go grab that suspicious tin of powdered milk standing in your pantry cupboard. Check the first three digits on the barcode. If it begins with a 690. or 691. or between 692 and 695, it's definitely made in China.

00-13 US/CANADA
30-37 FRANCE
40-44 GERMANY
49 JAPAN
50 UK
57 DENMARK
64 FINLAND
76 SWITZERLAND/LEICHTENSTEIN
628 SAUDI ARABIA
629 UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
740-
745 CENTRAL AMERICA
471 TAIWAN
480 PHILIPPINES

Funny how our government never, NEVER got around to informing the public about barcodes and how to read them. Then again, who trusts the government? Any one of them, for that matter.