CodeOnline Food - en

Mediapart (paywall) reports on an initiative of the french food industry to create a platform to aggregate and distribute food product information. The article does a very good job describing the caveats on that project, so no need to reiterate that.

Open Food Facts takes a wait and see approach: what will actually happen? What are licences? Which information will be available? How much information? It might be good to reiterate what Open Food Facts would like to see.

Open Food Facts is for an open and free approach. That means that anyone can add and edit product information: producers and consumers. This information can be used by anyone for free. However the original license (open and free) should not be violated.

Open Food Facts revolves around the verifiability of product information through product photos. It should be possible to verify any information in the database through these product photos. Only this way it can be assured that the information supplied by producers and consumers is correct, and whether it needs to be corrected.

Open Food Facts already conncts with manufacturers and distributors and has the software and api's in place to receive many others. So if a manufacturer subscribes to the idea of open and free, we wellcome him. No need to wait for the food industry.