All Square Roots packaging now features quick response codes to provide the whole story.
Square Roots announced the addition of a QR code food tracing barcode to all its packaging. The goal is to help Americans to see the whole story of their food so they can come to trust it again after several health scares.
The Romaine lettuce recall has placed the spotlight on some serious problems in the US food supply.
Among the biggest challenges to the Romaine lettuce recall was in trying to figure out exactly where the problem came from. As a result, all Romaine lettuce was pulled from shelves, despite the fact that the issue may have been isolated to a single supplier or region. It was virtually impossible to find the answer in time, so all Romaine was recalled as a precaution, likely destroying millions of heads of perfectly clean food and causing unrelated growers substantial financial harm.
Square Roots has added QR code food tracing to all its packaging. This allows consumers to see the entire story of their food. It includes where it was grown in the world, which farm grew it and what methods were used in its production.
After the Romaine recall nightmare, here’s how Square Roots is going to get Americans to trust their food again #knowyourfarmer 🤠🍃 https://t.co/GCUn6QqsGC
— Kimbal Musk (@kimbal) December 19, 2018
This type of QR code food tracing system can give consumers greater confidence in their food.
Lack of transparency regarding a food’s history can cause many problems. Though it is mainly an inconvenience for consumers in the majority of cases, the Romaine lettuce scare underscored precisely how problematic it can become when an issue actually arises.
Kimbal Musk, brother of Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX fame, believes that it is important to provide Americans with information about the unique story of any food they buy. This new level of transparency is available through a simple QR code scan or by entering the food’s lot number. Both the barcode and lot number are available on all Square Roots product packages, said a Medium report.
In theory, the more this type of QR code food tracing program is used, the faster and easier it will be to track down 
potential health problems relating to those foods. Moreover, it could also make it easier to isolate the source of the problems so that only potentially affected foods need to be recalled, instead of having to wipe all similar products off the shelf as a precaution.
