I was buying some apples when I stumbled upon stickers on some apples that got me puzzled; it used to be that fruits, particularly imported ones carry labels or stickers of their producers. However, this time I noticed some numbers on the label. A google search revealed that these numbers are codes assigned to the ways fruits are grown.
Here is the info:
- Conventional fruit labels: 4 digits and does not start with 9. They start mostly with the digit 4. The apple above is one conventionally grown with herbicides and fertilizers
- Organic fruit labels: five digits and start with the number 9, say for example 99222
- Genetically modified fruit: starts with the number 8, say for example 89222.