この記事から3年。。。
February 16, 2004
This week, for want of anything better to do, Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries is running an experiment to track eggs. They’ll be printed with an eat-by date and an 11-digit code that indicates the date they were collected, the producing farm, packing firm, and seller. Plugging that number into the Japan Egg Industry Association’s (appallingly cute) homepage will enable consumers to reference that information. By upping the number of digits the association says it would be possible to pinpoint right down to the bird that laid the egg and have photos of them on its website (sure, of course this is theoretically possible, but we assume they’re not seriously considering sending round a ton of goons with digicams to snap chicken portraits).
The system is an attempt to prevent incidents like that in December last year where some eggs that had been in refrigerated storage for six months were accidentally shipped out.