The Barcode Stickers On Your Fruits Probably Don’t Mean What You Think They Do

If a Genetically Modified food supplier thinks that customers won’t want to buy their GM products, they can decline to tag it with PLU codes. If retailers don’t expect the price of genetically modified produce to be any different from conventionally grown produce, they can omit the “8” that indicates that it is a genetically modified product.

At the end of the day, there is no government sponsored food labeling scheme in the United States that will assist you in determining whether or not produce is grown organically, conventionally, or is GM. If you, as a curious consumer, want to search the PLU code to find out what it identifies, you can do so here.