[ajsnigrutin]

In an ideal world, one UPC code would identify only one product with one set of ingredients and one weight. Want to make a "+20% free!" package? New UPC! Want to change the contents from 16% cacao to 14% cacao and some more sugar? Sure, new UPC.

The manufacturers would have to publish the contents for each UPC in a machine readable format.

Then the retailers would have to publish daily prices, again in a machine redable format.

...and the world would be a much nicer place for the consumer. Everyone could build apps on top of that, you could compare retailers, comparable items could be crowdsourced (eg, 1L of 3.5% fat milk and a list of all UPCs for that), shopping list apps could calculate the cheapest options to choose the cheapest store, or in cases with multiple stores in a cluster, tell you what to buy where, etc.

And the best thing is, that nobody actually regulates any prices or item sizes, just the consumer gets more informed.

[rendaw]

I thought this too, re: for Amazon review farming, but products are never homogeneous from the start.

All products have multiple component suppliers, with different tolerances/varieties, where the components are judged "close enough". Suppliers come and go. And even if it's a single large supplier, they may have different farms/factories/etc so you won't even be getting homogeneous components from them.

[saulrh]

Then extend product codes until every single individual batch - or even every single individual item - has a unique ID. Store information hierarchically if you have to to save space, but we have the technology today to track every single component of our entire supply chain. The automotive, aerospace, and defense industries already do this. The food industry even has the processes in place, they just only do the bare minimum to execute a recall when the FDA calls them on their shit. Even pet food can pull it off! All we have to do is make manufacturers go that rest of the way.

[acover]

The business just make store specific upcs like mattresses. Same cookies, different number

[Horffupolde]

You are free to do that. UPC is a private standard.