J Zaremba wrote on 2002-09-23 22:53 UTC: > Some imported foodstuffs sold in the US are labeled in metric only. I was > under the impression the US gov't required all food packaging to have ifp > rational units first and metric units second. Anyway, imported items have > the following after measurements: eg. > > 500g e > > Where the "e" is a stylized font different than the predominant font of > the packaging. What does the "e" represent?
It is called the "estimated sign". http://www.evertype.com/standards/euro/estimated/ Council Directive 75/106/EEC of 19 December 1974 on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to the making-up by volume of certain prepackaged liquids Type into http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/search/search_lif.html year 1975, number 106, Directive, or click on http://europa.eu.int/smartapi/cgi/sga_doc?smartapi!celexapi!prod!CELEXnumdoc&lg=EN&numdoc=31975L0106&model=guichett Unfortunately, only the TIF version has images. Summary: None of the weights or volumes that you find on products is exact. They are all just statistical average values, and the "e" signals that the manufacturer of this product claims to use the statistical regulations (sample sizes, failure probabilities, etc.) required for selling prepackaged goods in the European Union. Question: How do the EU and the US statistical requirements for labeling weights and volumes on prepackaged goods compare? Is there a change to harmonize the statistical requirements too, such that a "500 g can of fish" means the exact same thing on either side of the Atlantic? Markus -- Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
