On Saturday 21 February 2009 08:36:31 Jeremiah MacGregor wrote: > θ In addition to unit pricing, a metric-only option will also impact UPC > codes and price advertising as well as nutrition information and recipe > programs. > How? The product UPC code shouldn't change and nutrition is already given > in metric only. How would it affect the way it is advertised? I often see > price adds for 2 liter soda bottles with no mention of ounces. This does > not seem to affect the advertizing as they claim.
I think the UPC codes in question are on random-weight items. UPC labels on fixed-weight items don't encode any measurement or quantity. The left side (of UPC-A) encodes the manufacturer and the right side encodes the item. UPC labels on random-weight items encode the price; the weight is indicated in plaintext on the label. Ty Kelley wrote: > Thanks for your e-mail. Yes, metric creep is happening here in the > United States, but Americans still embrace inches and pounds, feet, > yards, ounces, quarts and gallons, etc. So as long as Congress does > not mandate metric only for grocery items, FMI will be happy. The proposed law does not mandate metric only. It only allows it. Would it help if I wrote to the president of Trader Joe's, and you wrote to the president of Albertson's, and so on? The member list is at http://www.fmi.org/forms/MemberDirectory/viewMemberDirectory?reportType=domesticrw, in case you'd like to check if your store is a member. Safeway is a member; I remember someone talking about asking Safeway to install a gram scale. Pierre
