I spent last night putting together this tool. You can try it out here: https://isitcanadian.cynber.dev/product-search

Some barcodes that you can try with:

• 0673513001507
• 0013000052528

It lets you search for a product by the barcode, and then using the Open Food Facts database, it will tell you where the product is from (origin of ingredients, location of manufacturing / processing, and where it is sold). You can then search for Canadian alternatives.

It uses the categories of the item to search for similar items in the database, and filters out items that aren’t Canadian in at least one of the ways above. You can further filter by those categories or by origin and manufacturing / processing location.

I chose Open Food Facts because it is an existing open source initiative, run by a non-profit, and already has lots of data. When a product is missing or incorrect, you can contribute it with their mobile app. This has the added benefit of improving the data for everyone, and there’s a lot more there than just the country of origin.

Some things I’d like to do:

• Ability to search by name, not just barcode
• Ability to scan a barcode instead of typing it in / pasting it
• Gather articles and compilations from community members since the search alone would be tedious
• Go through the mess I made of the code while trying to do it all in one night

I hope it’s helpful, and I’d love to hear feedback. It’s open source so if you want to contribute, you can find the code here: https://github.com/cynber/is-it-canadian

I’ll be back again tonight to respond to comments and feedback. Thanks you!