Those barcodes (aka, Universal Product Code or UPC) you see on your cereal package don’t get much notoriety. They’re scanned at the grocery or the big-box store on checkout, and that’s pretty much the end of it for the customer—unless a product is recalled. The sales data goes back through the supply chain to the food processor and provides valuable marketing and supply chain data. More than that, however, should a recall occur, the data contained in that UPC label is a key starting point for a recall. That 12-digit UPC can be associated with other product data or a GS1-128 barcode (typically appears in the supply chain but isn’t public), which can contain vital supply chain data as well as far more product info than contained in the 12-digit code.