Numbers on fruit and vegetable stickers don’t indicate whether they are genetically modified or not

Key takeaway

Price look up (PLU) are four- or five-digit numbers appearing on fruit and vegetable stickers that identify the type and variety of each produce. They make inventory control and check-outs faster and more accurate. Five-digit numbers starting with nine indicate organic produce, while those starting with eight merely indicate conventionally grown produce, The latter doesn’t indicate genetically modified produce.

Reviewed content

Verdict:

Inaccurate

Claim:

Five-digit numbers starting with eight on fruit and vegetable stickers indicate that they are genetically modified; “If you see this sticker on a fruit DO NOT buy it at any cost”

Verdict detail

Factually inaccurate: The International Federation for Produce Standards (IFPS) explained that five-digits numbers beginning with eight on fruits produce stickers aren’t made to identify genetically modified produce. Instead, they’re an extension of the original four-digit system that is running out of available numbers for new items.

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Full Claim

Five-digit numbers starting with eight on fruits and vegetables stickers indicate that they are genetically modified ; “If you see this sticker on a fruit DO NOT buy it at any cost”

Some claims circulate on the Internet for years and periodically go viral. One example is the claim that fruits with stickers bearing a five-digit number starting with eight on their sticker are genetically modified.

Posts and webpages making this claim usually associate it with strong recommendations to avoid these fruits, hinting that they are harmful to health. One can find examples here, here, and here.

A Facebook post from August 2024 also relayed this claim. It contained a picture of an apple with the caption “If you see this sticker on a fruit DO NOT buy it at any cost”. The sticker on the apple displayed a five-digit number starting with the number eight, which was circled in black. Thus, the post makes a clear reference to the evergreen claim mentioned above.

However, this claim is baseless: fruits with a five-digit number aren’t different from those with other types of numbers and aren’t harmful.

In a fact-check of an earlier iteration of this claim, the news outlet AFP explained that this number is called a price look up (PLU). PLUs are assigned by the International Federation for Produce Standards (IFPS) and serve to “make check-out and inventory control easier, faster and more accurate”.

Fruits and vegetables are randomly assigned a PLU in order to be rapidly identified. For instance, the PLU “3108” corresponds to medium-sized oranges of the Valencia variety, as a code search that we performed on the IFPS website showed. This way, the retailer doesn’t need to determine the variety of an orange by eye and can easily check its price in their catalog.

PLUs are either four-digit or five-digit numbers belonging to the 3000-3999, 4000-4999, 83000-83999, and 84000-84999 ranges. There are certain five-digit PLUs that indicate that the product was produced organically, specifically those starting with the prefix nine. But with regards to the prefix eight, the five-digit 83000 and 84000 series will be used when all the possible PLUs numbers from the 3000 and 4000 series are exhausted, according to the IFPS. Thus, the prefix eight doesn’t indicate genetically modified fruits, which contradicts the claim.

AFP retrieved an IFPS press release that may shed some light on how this claim came about. The press release stated:

“Though the ‘8’ prefix (83000 – 84999) was once reserved for GMO produce items, the prefix was never used at retail. Stripping the prefix of this particular designation will yield one thousand additional PLU numbers to be used in future years.”

In other words, the IPFS had initially considered using the prefix eight to indicate genetically modified items, but it was never implemented. When the IFPS ran out of available PLUs in the 3000 and 3000 series, it repurposed the 83000 and 84000 series to be used for new items conventionally produced.

In summary, five-digit PLUs starting with eight don’t indicate genetically modified fruits and vegetables. This code is simply an extension of the original four-digit codes to accommodate more produce.