Barcode prefixes identify issuing organisation, not country of manufacture
A widely repeated claim holds that the first digits of a barcode reveal where a product was made, but this is factually incorrect according to GS1, the organisation that issues the numbers. The prefix actually identifies the GS1 member organisation that assigned the number to a brand owner, which is typically based in the company's home country but does not reflect where goods are produced. A developer found no existing dataset that accurately represented this distinction and built an open-source npm and Python package called gs1-prefix to correct the record. The package uses GS1's own prefix list as its primary source and flags two ranges — 612 and 894 — where GS1's data conflicts with Wikipedia rather than silently resolving the discrepancy. The dataset and a lookup tool are freely available, with raw CSV, JSON, and DCAT-AP files also accessible via an open CORS endpoint.
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