Sunday, April 6, 2008

QR Codes For Hua-Lien Organic Products

User scans an official QR Code label issued by the Council of Agriculture

Not only are QR Codes for food traceability promoted by at the national level in Taiwan, I also recently noticed that it is being implemented at a more regional/local level as well. The Hua-Lien Shien Bureau of Agriculture also have their own system for certifying organic agriculture products from Hua-Lien using QR Codes.

QR Code label by Hua-Lien Shien Bureau of Agriculture

The Hua-Lien Shien stickers are noticeably larger and seems to have more information, even including a photo of the producer. However, scanning the QR Code takes you to a web page with pretty much the same information (link). Therefore the enlarged label is probably taking into consideration that most people are still not equipped with mobile barcode readers.

If you are into organic products, Hua-Lien Shien has setup an online shop for these products, check it out.

Related links (Chinese): Taiwanese farmers with cutting edge technology, Technology and tradition

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not to forget, that with QR-Codes the user is able to scan without internet connection.
e.g. to send a SMS with keyword.
like on http://www.lalaola.com

regards Oliver

Anonymous said...

http://www.meiji.co.jp/al0803/Member/LoginForm

I'm not sure if you could figure out of this link, now serialized QR Code for product promotion is used for purchase certification.

mike said...

Hi Oliver,
Yes, you are right. QR Codes that contain a predefined SMS or Email (eshu happens to provide a nice example from Meiji) are great ways for the end user to initiate a mobile service when internet is unavailable or for some reason undesirable.

Hi eshu,
Thanks for the link! I love how Japanese explain things/processes with nice looking graphs. It's cool that they highlighted the benefit of scanning a QR is that it eliminates the last step of manually entering the serial number. I wonder if these Meiji chocolates can be found here in Taipei...

Anonymous said...

Hi Mike,
I guess this is only for Japan, unfortunately... I figure this is a limited period promotion that you could have an oppourtunity to win a Nintendo DS(you know the game player).