Problem updating ingredients in the Android app

[davitof]

I found a few old products for which ingredients have changed over the years, although the barcode is the same. I took a pic of the ingredients, asked the app to OCR it, which it did fine, tapped the update button, but when I return to the ingredients list, it is still the old list from a few years ago. I found another thread explaining that this could happen when the ingredients list was provided by the manufacturer, but that this detail could only be seen in the web UI. So I went to the OFF web and checked the first of those products, but I don’t see any sign the ingredients are locked.

Furthermore, I feel that OFF is about users providing data, and letting manufacturers lock information does not seem very “open” to me.

Are the ingredients here indeed locked? If so where do I see it? Is there some hint in the Android app?

Or is this simply a bug?

[Canard164]

@davitof

I found another thread explaining that this could happen when the ingredients list was provided by the manufacturer, but that this detail could only be seen in the web UI.

This is not true anymore, since the mobile app was updated to show the manufacturer blocks the updates. Here is the icon showing that for your example.

@davitof

Furthermore, I feel that OFF is about users providing data, and letting manufacturers lock information does not seem very “open” to me.

I fully agree with you. This is what I commented in another thread:

Richer and better structured data in Open Food Facts

I hope crowdsourced data will be priorized over manufacturer data because in my experience manufacturers load their product data once and do not update them when anything changes. Their data becomes unreliable over time.

[davitof]

I read the announcement. Allowing to enter user-defined data which conflicts with manufacturer-provided data is indeed planned! Thank you for the link.