A presentation of Open Food Facts, the free food products database.

1. A more transparent food industry thanks to
crowdsourcing and open data
Stéphane Gigandet
Advanced Master "International Food Industry Management"
ESSEC – Sept. 12th
2013

2. Agenda
● The problem
● Our solution
● How we do it
● What can be done with it
● What anyone can do with it
● Business model
● Future plans

3. ? ?
“beef meat”
“vegetable oil”For consumers,
the food industry
is a black box

4. Can we open the data on food products ourselves?
and ?
OpenStreetMap
The Free Wiki World Map

5. An Open and Collaborative Database
● Crowdsourcing:
● Launched in May 2012
● 600 contributors
● 12000 products
● Open Database Licence

6. Crowdsourcing
● Data of public interest for many different reasons
● Lots of potential contributors
● Local community engagement is a challenge

7. Decrypting labels
Carmin = E120 = Acide Carminique
Photo par Frank Vincentz, licence CC-BY-SA 3.0

8. Better labels
● In the UK:
● Traffic light labelling rejected by EU in 2010
● Today on Open Food Facts:

9. Comparing products
More transparency:
● Better choices
● Better products?

10. Open Data
● Some data is too important to
be kept locked
– Beware of one-way crowdsourcing
● Open Data
– Anyone can reuse the data for any purpose
● Open Database Licence :
– Attribution + Share-Alike

11. http://cestfabriquepresdechezvous.info/
Open Food Facts data
+ OpenStreetMap map

12. http://combiendesucres.fr

13. Benefits of Open Data
● Motivated contributors
● Greater impact on society through re-uses
– Potential uses > Foreseen uses
● Commercial use is allowed
– e.g. talking bottle project
Open Me!

14. Business model
● Non-profit project
● All contributors are volunteers
● R&D, Hosting etc.
– Offered by recettes.de/cuisine
– 1 tenth of a server
– Half of my time

15. Future plans
● Focus on international development
– Community building
– Database growth
– Applications and re-uses
● Many more ideas
– Roadmap:
http://www.mindmeister.com/fr/248768223/open-food-facts-roadmap-2013

16. Join us!
http://openfoodfacts.org
@OpenFoodFacts
contact@openfoodfacts.org