Obsolete products

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In the Open Food Facts ecosystem, we call obsolete a product that is no longer sold.

In real life

Obsolete products can be hard to identify. Some products are not sold anymore in a supermarket or a region, but that does not mean they are no more elsewhere.

The main source for the obsolete products should the producers themselves: they know when they stopped to produce them. BUT, some products can be used or sold a long time after they have been sold:

  • food products with a long shelf life, sometimes years or even dozens of years (!)
  • non-food products that can be used for a long time; eg. a car

In Open Food Facts

It is important to know the obsolete products:

  • we should exclude them from some stats
  • we should exclude them from normal search (while making possible to specifically search for them or with them)
  • we could completely block their modification if data are complete and verified
  • etc.

How to tag?

Obsolete products can be tagged by moderators at the beginning of the "edit" page. We don't let any user to do this because it can be hard to be sure.

How to find?

Each obsolete product is still visible on Open Food Facts (example). A message tells the user it is obsolete.

Obsolete products are still exported as CSV data.

When using the API, obsolete products are identified by fields beginning by "obsolete":

  • obsolete: should only contain "on"
  • obsolete_imported: can contain "1" to represent that the information has been imported from our pro platform
  • obsolete_since_date: the withdrawal date: the date when the product have been removed from the market
  • obsolete_since_date_imported:

Bug and feature request

In our bug tracking and feature request system, we have a category dedicated to obsolete products.