The working barcode and alert responses expose their publisher, source role and retrieval time; future stored observations must preserve the same contract.
Method note · checked 3 August 2026
Useful data.
Unequal authority.
HonourFood does not pour every source into one database and call it truth. The working method requires publisher, role, retrieval time, licence, freshness and evidential boundary to remain visible as each connector matures.
Working trust hierarchy
Start with the pack. Add the rule. Show the gap.
- 01
Exact-pack evidence
Current physical pack
Front, back, ingredient, nutrition and lot/date captures establish what a particular pack actually displayed in a particular market and period. The barcode alone identifies a trade-item family; it does not prove the formulation remained unchanged.
- Use it for
- Identity, printed claims, ingredient order, allergens, dates and artwork.
- Do not infer
- Private until rights, redaction, pack matching and human review are complete.
- 02
Official safety overlay
Food Standards Agency alerts
The FSA feed supplies official allergy alerts, product recalls and food alerts. HonourFood sorts by the record’s modification date and links back to the official alert.
- Use it for
- Alert status, consumer advice and official action.
- Do not infer
- Most alerts do not provide a reliable barcode. Text matching creates a possible lead, never an automatic exact-pack recall match.
- 03
Official rules source
GB Nutrition and Health Claims Register
The Great Britain register records authorised and non-authorised nutrition and health claims and their conditions of use. It is a rules source, not a product database.
- Use it for
- Testing a verified label claim against the applicable GB conditions.
- Do not infer
- Northern Ireland can follow a different legal route; every conclusion must name its jurisdiction and evidence cut-off.
- 04
Community discovery
Open Food Facts
A barcode lookup can supply a provisional name, brand, ingredient text and data-quality signals. Open Food Facts states that its volunteer-supplied data is not assured to be accurate, complete or reliable.
- Use it for
- Discovery, deduplication and asking the contributor for the missing pack view.
- Do not infer
- Never publish it as an HonourFood finding without exact-pack confirmation. Live use also requires an accountable contact, controlled pilot enablement and anti-abuse controls; database and image licences are tracked separately.
- 05
Generic composition benchmark
CoFID
The UK Composition of Foods Integrated Dataset can contextualise generic food composition. It is not a live, barcode-level catalogue and cannot establish the current contents of a branded pack.
- Use it for
- Research context and generic nutrient comparisons.
- Do not infer
- No product verdict and no substitution for a current pack or manufacturer specification.
Connector contracts
What the software must preserve.
Connector responses expose when they were retrieved. A source outage is shown as unavailable rather than silently turning an old response into a current claim.
FSA material is handled under the Open Government Licence. Open Food Facts database, contents and images have distinct reuse terms.
Community discovery, official alerts, legal rules and editorial conclusions remain separate truth layers in storage and presentation.
Planned immutable receipt versions will preserve evidence cut-offs. Until that control is built, the site must not claim that old conclusions are technically reproducible.
No match, incomplete data, pilot hold and source unavailable are different states. None means “safe”, “genuine” or “approved”.
Working integration
Try the barcode boundary.
The scanner checks HonourFood first and labels any outside record as discovery only. Exact-pack evidence still requires the photographed label.
Open barcode lookup