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Comment by prox | Hacker News Reader

I would be massively in favour of adding a QR Code that details as much as possible (without giving away trade secrets if that is possible) where and how something is sourced and then adding how it was processed. Much like you get a track and trace with a package.

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Who cares about hiding trade secrets if those trade secrets are "just a pinch of mercury" or some other nefarious chemical.

Just thinking ahead here for some possible pitfalls why companies would be against it.

Unfortunately I just see anything that they don’t want to disclose (because it’s harmful) to become a trade secret

Then mandate a label that clearly states there are unknow ingredients that the manufacturer refuses to list.

On any ingredients list, that should be assumed when there is a vague ingredient like "Artificial Flavors".

Industry plainly lists potassium sorbate, sorbic acid, and sodium nitrite, which are known carcinogens.

On top of that, the packaging matters: PET is a phtalate which is an endocrine disruptor.

They are going to be against it anyway.

In principal, known toxins (when at anything even close to toxic doses when used normally) should be just not allowed in consumer products in the first place.

In practice, people like their alcoholic drinks and don't understand why that by itself is enough to require the Californian proposition 65 "substances at this location are known to cause cancer" sticker.

The good news is that the FDA sets "acceptable levels"[1] in food, for things like animal feces, insect infestation, mold, rodent hairs and filth, maggots, and so on, beyond which enforcement is mandatory. The bad news is they are nonzero.

1: https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/04/health/insect-rodent-filth-in...

>The bad news is they are nonzero.

Especially with mold, zero is very very difficult to attain.

EWG has something that’s a lot better than nothing: https://www.ewg.org/skindeep/

They also have an app that can scan UPC codes.

I knew I'd find EWG mentioned here, they're fantastic. Thank you for posting.

Close, https://world.openfoodfacts.org/ and https://world.openbeautyfacts.org/, by the same association. Crowd-sourced databases that you can query scanning the barcode using their app.

The quality and availability of the information you can find varies greatly, but it's very easy to contribute. You won't find much that is not already written on the label though.

Your proposed requirement would have a nice side benefit of making supply chains much easier to trace for other purposes (e.g., why are some shelves bare in my grocery store).

I'd want a carve out for home "manufacturers" that sell less than the US median wage per year in product. They should be able to just display the QR codes cut out from the packages of their ingredients rather than creating their own QR code infrastructure.

Indeed, supply chains, or a webcam to the free range chicken eggs perhaps. Lots of options to make things a bit more transparent.

That's a pretty clever idea. I like it! There is limited package space on items, this would allow producers to document a whole lot of info and allow consumers immediate access.

The idea actually comes from when I followed CJ Chivers (expert on weapons and war correspondent) A lot of his work is done by gathering spent munitions on the battlefield and then tracing it back to its source. The life of a weapon and munitions is usually well documented (and can go back decades!)

This exists in Europe - it’s catchily called ECHA SCIP. You can search by EAN at https://echa.europa.eu/scip-database

Pretty cool.

But fairly, limited:

> Articles containing substances of very high concern (SVHCs) on the Candidate List at a concentration above 0.1% weight by weight (w/w)

I think you forget that most people don't have basic competency with even their phones. Most have no clue how to scan a QR code.

It's still an improvement over the status quo.

People have the capacity to learn and scanning a QR code once you’ve seen it done once is pretty straightforward. during covid QR code menus replaced physical menus in NY for most restaurants. People complained (i don’t particularly like them either) then adapted.

Different strokes for different folks and all that but I'm a bit of a picky eater and love being able to unambiguously mark what I don't want on my food on the ordering web apps some restaurants use now. On the other hand those places that have the QR code link to nothing but a PDF menu are just annoying.

Those people wouldn't be able to interpret the data anyway. You forget that most people don't have basic competency in science, and basing decisions on that data would be extremely difficult to start with.

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