Who is the manufacturer of the milk, cheese or sausage, for example? Was the cheaper product produced by the same manufacturer as a well-known brand product?
In order to identify the producer of products of animal origin, the EU has introduced the so-called EC identification and health marks (Genusstauglichkeits- und Identitätskennzeichen in Germany). It is an oval symbol that includes, among other things, the country of origin and the approval number of the manufacturing company.
Screenshots of the Android App (left) and Windows Apps (rigth)
This app that let's you quickly identify manufacturer by selecting the country and the approval number. Currently, the countries - Germany (DE), Austria (AT), Switzerland (CH), Italy (IT) and France (FR) are available in the app.
Sample health marks - not actually existing
You can search for the address in your prefered map application and even start a web search for the company.
REMARK: Since the data for the health mark data base is extracted from the individual web pages and I do not have an agreement with the authorities maintaining these data, the data is not included in this app. Some sample scripts to extract these data can be found at this project.
What is working at the moment: Currently Windows and Android builds are working. I do not own an Mac so currently I cannot do the Apple part.
Best intro and further documentation can be found at the flutter webpage
You can directly download them as zip-file or better clone the sources using git. Check the button Code on upper right of this page.
On the command line go to the projects folder herkunft and then run the following command depending on your target operating system:
- Android build:
flutter build apk - Windows build:
flutter build windows
As described above, I do not have an agreement with the authorities managing the data. So I cannot just provide them here. The format for the sqlite data base is:
Each country has its own table. Keep country names short. Otherwise it might mess up the drop down list. I am using coutry codes.
Each table has the same columns:
- name: The name of the producer
- address: The address - street-name number, postcode city - in my case
- approvalNo: The actuall approval number of the EC identification and health marks
- approvalNoOld: The old number (I think mainly in Germany)
- comment: Some additional information
Some sample Python code on how to extract them is provided in another project.
Once you have the sqlite data base built, you can upload it to the Android device or your Windows computer.
At the first start of the app you will be asked to import the data base. By clicking on the text (link), the file browser will let you choose the data base. Once imported you can delete the original file.
If you want to import a new version of the data base, you can do so via the menu at the top left. Choose Import data and select the new data base within the file browser.
Select the country you are searching the health mark for. Usually you find the country code on the health mark label.
Type in the code. Do not type in the country code and no EC, CE here.
Sample health marks
Screenhot of the search on Android
Currently only available on Android.
Click on the camera button for scanning the code. A dialog is opened. You might need to grant access for the app to use the camera.
Point the camera towards the code so it appears in the the blue rectangle. Not the country code and no EC, CE). See images above. Wait till the code is recognised and then press OK.
Screenhot of the scanning on Android
If you want to find a specific company or all companies in a city or specific address, you can enter the name or address as search string or scan the name or address via the camera button (The later currently only available on Android).
Screenhot of search for city on Android
If the code is found in the data base you will see some cards with the information on the company found.
You can click the Open on map button to see the companies location on a map.
You can click the Web search button to search for the company online.
Did you choose the correct country code in the drop down?
Did you include the country code or EC, CE? If yes, leave it out.
May be the wrtiting of the code in the data base is different from yours.
May be the code is not in the data base.
If the search field is empty after hitting OK button there might not have been a final reading. Please try again.
Check the result of the reading. There might be some issues with the text recognition.
2023-11-18: For Android added scanning the health mark with the phone camera - used library flutter_scalable_ocr 2023-11-01: Updated flutter (2.7.x => 3.1.x) and libraries from 2021 version to new 2023 up to date versions