1. Physical means of traceability

1.1 Barcodes

In the introduction to his book Barcode , Pierre Georget reveals how the barcode was born: "On the beach in Miami, where Joe Woodland, was trying to answer the question put to him by the owner of a local chain of grocery stores: how to easily identify each product at the checkout?" Planting his five fingers in the sand and pulling them towards him, he drew a succession of broad and thin lines... And thus the first barcode was born!

Since then, many new bar codes have appeared: more than 250 have been inventoried....